A season in every thing……..

According to my former flower shop/green house owner cousin, any plant is a weed if it is not growing where you want. I have pulled up and replanted my fair share of plants and bulbs. I admit to having a hard time actually throwing away a flower or plant. If I dig them up and leave them around long enough before finding an appropriate place to relocate, Mike has no such compunction. 

Last summer we lost our beautiful Bradbury pear tree during a summer storm. I say tornado, in Illinois they refer to the circular motion as a microburst. We were pulling into our driveway after an early evening round of storm chasing. There were sirens going off and based on the wind whipping the tops of trees we decided to come home and go to the basement. We watched the neighbors 100+ year old birch tree twist, turn and crack down the middle, falling onto our house and splitting our tree.

We went from beautiful shade gardens to lots of direct sun. Our hostas were banged up and looked pretty ragged the rest of the summer. The impatiens we always plant flattened and did not do well with the sun and heat. We were not sure which plants would make a comeback this spring. I am happy to report the gardens look good for the time being. We are having a cool, wet spring. I am not sure how the July and August sun will affect the previous more shade-than-not plantings. We will be keeping an eye on them this summer.

The parallels of planting, nurturing and growing gardens and living a balanced life have always been obvious to me. The need to weed out unwanted plants and unwanted behaviors and attitudes in our lives are the same need. The cycle of life is the same as the cycle of seasons. Just as there are seasons of planting seeds, growth, maintaining and dying off in a garden, our lives are about birth, growth, maturity and death.

The annual cycle is a microcosm of our entire life journey. I see it as a smaller spiraling circle moving up, or down, within the larger upward spiraling circle of an individual’s life passage. Occasionally the smaller circle loses ground and may spiral down before continuing the upward journey.  Sometimes the downward spiral is a blip and sometimes it is a massive derail.

There are all kinds of psychological diagnoses and names for blips, derails, perversions, neuroses, psychoses……when I think of them in the context of my spiraling circle analogy I think we are sometimes stuck in a particular place in the spiral. Some of us more than others and none of us for the same reason or reasons. We are all unique in our own way, just as we all fall down and get up, or not, in our own way.

What happened in our shade garden last summer was a cycle interrupted. Things are looking pretty good at the moment, I am thinking they may not look so good later on this summer; we are moving upward and hoping for the best. The past year of my seasonal cycle has been filled with ups and downs. This year the downs have never gone below the previous spiral up.

I am feeling thankful and grateful and blessed……..

©2011 Susan Kendall.  All rights reserved

About Lily

Born in Topeka, Kansas in the middle of the 20th Century, daughter, granddaughter, niece, sister, cousin, mother, aunt, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend, reader, spiritual, writer, cook, crafter, junker...... twice-married, former non-profit executive in retread mode... currently living a bucket list life in a remodeled schoolhouse.....
This entry was posted in Gardening, Musings. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to A season in every thing……..

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.