Today’s post is a celebration of time, beauty, love, friendship, and the simple, small things in life. May you find this in your life today and every day. You are an important part of my weekly life as I write…you are appreciated!
“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
~ Georgia O’Keeffe (Famous for her stunning ‘in your face’ enlarged floral blossoms…I think she had a lot of floral ‘friends.’)
(Thank you, Georgia O’Keefe, for slowing us down and showing us the beauty in each and every single bloom with your art.)
Something has overtaken me this year and I have gone crazy with planting flowers (and some veggies too!). I used to have time for these little friends every spring/summer, but what with study, practice, teaching, family, friends, groceries, shopping, meals… You know how it is! I ‘ran out of time’ for some of the things that give me so much joy and love of life—I missed my little plant/flower/veggie friends.
But this year I found myself scouring the greenhouses, dazzled by the colours, the fragrance, the fuzziness of leaves, the smell of dirt and just-watered-containers, and was inspired to buy a little pot of this and a big pot of that. The burbling water fountains even inspired me to buy a laughing Buddha water fountain as an early birthday present for hubbie. (If you have met my husband, you’d see the resemblance!)
Heavenly scents, sounds, and sights that are much-needed medicine in my world where time, for the last few years, has been some kind of strange currency that there is never enough of it. Funny how I am reminded of a children’s book that I read many years ago called The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
“Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.”
~ Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
So I am having the time of my life this year—with the help of my friend Lizzie who is the queen of plant rescues—finding loving homes for perennials that are displaced and looking for love. When Lizzie comes over, I never quite know what she will bring, but whatever plant it is, it will have its own uniqueness and beauty and a spot already picked out. Lizzie is more than a plant rescuer; she is a master gardener/designer. For Lizzie, it’s all about colour and texture, and for me…fragrance! Between the two of us, we are appreciating the gift of time as we create our grand opus in honour of our very short summers. We will need more than one season, but that’s OK. Right now, we have time.
With the creation of an urban garden, we are creating time for each other as well. We raised our kids together from babies to adulthood and now we are nurturing another kind of seed for the future…a future that says, in spite of floods, suffering, sickness, and so much destruction, there is life, there is beauty, there is abundance. Life chooses life.
Simple things…like a meal, a lemonade on a hot day while gardening, the perky face of a viola, the scent of heliotrope on a breeze, the way a purple petunia weaves its way through the copper-colored heuchera, and the scent of rose geranium on your hand long after you have brushed its fuzzy, rough leaves. There is time. Time becomes expansive when I am in this space. It is strange how that works. Spending time with what and whom you love expands time…a kind of eternity. Maybe that is the experience William Blake was sharing with us when he wrote:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
What does any of this have to do with homeopathy? For me, being with my garden this year is restorative, which means that I am a better person and a better homeopath. Gardens are healing and homeopathy is healing—and many remedies come from plant sources. Little viola is a great eczema remedy (when the symptom picture fits the person) while Nicotiana is a member of the Solanacea family, sister to Tabacum, which is an excellent remedy for seasickness. Here they are together creating beauty and fragrance on my front porch:
Here is a photo of Lizzie’s miniature Victorian garden with Lavender (herbally used for headaches and skin ailments), Scented Night Stock, and Heliotrope in a faux Japanese pot:
Finally, waiting for their arrival, we have the Legume family with fragrant sweet peas and, in between, the ever practical pea-for-eating—all part of Lizzie’s plan for the small-space urban gardener! Have your garden and eat it too! In homeopathy, the Legume family is well represented by Lathyrus (a polio remedy…yep!) and Baptisia, commonly known as indigo (a very important flu remedy when the symptom picture fits the flu picture of the person). In this photo you will have to pretend to see the sweet peas (they are the little shoots against the green boards of the front porch, just below the hanging baskets):
The last photo is the invisible photo. After dinner last night, Lizzie and I went to check on the ‘spuds’ (Solanaceae…same family as Tobacco!) and radishes. To our great delight, we found one radish ready for plucking. By our squeals you would have thought this to be the only radish ever grown from seed and that we had accomplished some mighty miracle. We ate it on the spot! No photo op, but it was the best radish ever grown by an urban gardener anywhere. The other 10 radishes will taste equally sweet…I’m certain! (May I kindly remind you, amidst the snickering…, all about quality not quantity…right?) Maybe next year we will bump the radish numbers up to 20 or so after this year’s huge success.
My wish for you this summer? To find time, make time, create time, and enjoy time in the small delights and the big celebrations—and may you have time for plants, flowers, and veggies. With every breath you take, you can be grateful to a plant, the giver of the oxygen we breathe! What would we do without them?
p.s. Send me a photo of your favourite flowers…or veggies! We can have a harvest of goodness in one of the fall posts!
