Lessons From the Garden

Life is a lot like a garden. Ever-changing. Never perfect. Full of colour and texture. It's hard work, but rewarding.

Like life, a garden provides pleasure and beauty alongside sadness and disaster.

Scattering the Seeds


We sew seeds in life every day; seeds of friendship and enmity, of success and failure, of joy and despair.


Sometimes we sew them accidentally.

Sometimes we choose to sew the wrong seeds.

Sometimes the seeds we sew will die or turn out very differently to the way we had expected.


Sometimes seeds grow that we didn't sew ourselves.


Sometimes we sew the right seeds in the wrong place and they struggle to thrive. Or we call them weeds, tear them out and throw them away.


Sometimes we sew seeds and don't nurture them properly. We feed them with worry and water them with doubt. Or we neglect them and the weeds take over.


But when we sew the right seeds in the right place and we nurture them often, with just a little love and attention, the result is incredible. Little seeds soon become flowers of amazing, awesome, powerful beauty. Beauty to take your breath away. Beauty to melt your heart or soothe your soul.

As a flower scatters its seeds to spread beauty through a garden, we can scatter seeds of tolerance and compassion. Or positive thinking. Or creativity. Or justice.


Making the Most of What We Have


Creating a garden is all about working with what we have. We cannot change the location or the weather or the soil, just as we cannot change who we are, where we came from or what we have to work with in our lives right now.


But we can work with nature to create something healthy and happy.


We can work hard to prepare the ground and provide for needs.

We can choose to plant things that will thrive.


We can adapt to changes.


And we can change the way we look at it ...


Choosing Our Perspective


If we don't like the view, then we can easily change it. We can uproot and replant things. We can grow new things. We can take down fences and build benches. (And weave hearts.)


We can change the view or we can change the direction in which we look. We can decide to go and sit in a different part of the garden and appreciate a different view.


We can change the view or we can change the way we look at it. The wider picture, the smallest details; both are as important in the garden as they are in life. Looking at something from a different angle, from closer or further away, can make a big difference to the way we perceive it.


We can change the view or we can change ourselves.


Lessons From the Garden


There is a time for everything. And everything has its time.


Things happen. Not everything goes to plan. (Often, things work out even better than planned.)

Weeds are just flowers in the wrong place.

Hard work in the right place is doubly rewarding. It feels good and it pays off in the long run.


Things may or may not work. But they are always worth trying.


The things we truly love and nurture will grow the best.


Nature As Mentor


Nature can certainly teach us a thing or two!


Flowers teach us that rain is just as important as sunshine. In fact, without plenty of rain, flowers will quickly die. Flowers also look gorgeous in the rain!


Trees teach us how to live alongside each other. Walking through Bluebell Woods and around the Mere last week, I was amazed to notice just how many different trees were happily living side by side. The reason I actually noticed was because I had seen this lovely image, and read Rosa Say's inspiring words:

*Lōkahi. We can live in harmony and in unity.

If trees can do it, rooted together where they stand, then so can we!

Birds teach us how to greet the new day with a song. They don't seem to worry much about what happened yesterday, they are simply filled with joy at each new dawn. Joy at having worms to catch and a family to feed. Joy at being alive and being able to sing. And they share their joy with everyone around them.

Wishing you all a wonderful week, filled with riotous colour and jubilant song!

(The links above are all to images on flickr. It's much easier than doing battle with Blogger! I love sharing pictures with you, but still have real problems both with uploading and with spacing. Flickr rocks!)

* Lōkahi (loh-kah-hee) means harmony, unity and collaboration. For more on beautilful Hawaiian values, have a look at Rosa's fab Managing With Aloha Coaching.

:o)