La Belle's Hobby Farm: Farmgirl Meditations on Beauty

But he who dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose.

~ Anne Brontë

In September, I’m participating in the Sapphire Even Day Blogging Challenge and the Two Pages-A-Day Writing Challenge. 

A

wise gardener sees beauty in the grotesque.  

She takes nothing at face value.  Where others may see death and decay, she sees rebirth and nourishment.  Where they see an insect to be feared or destroyed, she sees a predator that takes care of invasive insects that would otherwise destroy her plants.

Patience is usually held up as the virtue of the gardener.  And it is, but it’s not the

foundational virtue.  Rather, the gardener’s cornerstone is a heart that is unconditionally accepting and eyes that pierce the surface layer.  And this gift is especially needed in the first blush of autumn, when the summer harvest has dwindled to a trickle, and the fall plantings have not yet matured.

In my garden, the tomato vines are withering away, but they valiantly support fruit that is still green.  If I were more concerned with mere appearance and less with harvesting the last of summer’s bounty, I would have pulled up the ugly plants long ago.  But I know if I leave some fruit on the vine and it drops to the ground, I will have volunteers next year. 

So glad to share my marigolds with the bees!
© 2013, Mikaela D’Eigh

Same for the marigolds.  The little ninjas seemed to explode every time my back was turned and they are still going strong.  But several of them have turned brown.  But if I pull them out before the seed pods are fully dry, the seeds will rot.  So I harvest what I can and wait for the others to dry.  The brown stalks don’t appear ugly to me.   

They are beautiful because they carry the promise of next spring.

My Love is a Garden

The heart too has its seasons: seasons of growth, of harvest, of joy, and of death and pain.  It is easy to see the seasons of joy as beautiful and the wintery days of pain as ugly.  But everything we experience is beautiful if we allow ourselves to see it.  The cultivation of this type of sight doesn’t come to the heart overnight.

A gardener learns through her mistakes and grows a more abundant harvest the following year.  So too a soul learns to weed when she needs to, to harvest when the time is right, and to use every experience as spiritual and emotional compost, so that the next harvest is richer, stronger, sweeter.

While we wait for the storm to pass, try to remember that it is nourishing the roots.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

How is your fall garden faring?  And how is your heart preparing for Autumn?