A photo and short reflection.
Plus, home accessories you definitely don't need.
At the botanic garden, I strike up a pleasant conversation with another walker, a woman in her 70s, in a straw visor and t-shirt cataloging various species of birds.
We marvel at the mundane, the obvious: the perfection of the weather today, the sturdy ornamental bridge we stand on, the lotus blooming, bull rushes stirring, a floating dragonfly sculpture in the middle of the pond.
The day is a gift to us both.
Our shared gratitude is a gift in itself.
When I emerge from a sun-speckled forest path into the open; a field without ornament, I meet a spectacular feast of small sounds. Meadow song: cricket wings, bee drone, grasshopper hum and rustle in late summer grass.
The goldenrod is glorious in simplicity and abundance, New York ironweed–an exclamation of royal color.
I converse with an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, blissfully unaware of my shadow on the beckoning blooms. I hover over its floating, graceful hurry.
“Oh! You’re not afraid, are you?”
Why would it be?
Every stalk and seed is a world of possibility; the growing promise of new life.
I love plants and I find joy in keeping them alive for as long as I can, but I’m very clear-eyed about that fact that my Home Depot cacti are not my children.
Thanks, y’all.