knowing that you are a flower, opening

I have watched the flower buds unfold this year. In spring, the tulips and daffodils slowly unfolded, showing a bit more color each day, incrementally, taking weeks to fully bloom. Now that it is summer, in the warm sun and soft rain, poppies, peonies and lilies that were tight balls the night before are wide open the next morning. And I think we are all flowers, too, bringing forth our unique thoughts, our softest emotions, our true art, more readily when the world around us is warm and welcoming.

Here are some of what’s been blooming in my garden and studio:

 

 

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Garden Retreat

 

This is my back yard. It was a shambles when we bought the house, but we’ve built the flagstone patio area with the swing, fire pit and picnic table, planted tender new flowerbeds everywhere and spent many long evenings eating and laughing together here.

My daughter and I just finished this dinnerware set, which combines my Organic Soul with her garden Retreat.

 

We’ve worked hard on the dinnerware set to make the leaf plates curl gracefully, to make plates that are organic shapes but also not warped. We’ve sweated in physical labor as a family creating our retreat far more than the time we’ve spent lazily enjoying it.

Is this a conundrum, to work hard making a place of rest, or a dinnerware set intended for long leisurely meals?

The work has been a kind of joy and pleasure unlike any other. There are thoughts that come while forming clay into a poppy or planting new lilies or laying the flagstone that are as if the mind has opened and something large and full of grace steps in. Inside of the physical work of creativity I find delight, as if delight were the most serious thing possible.

Irises, wet with rain

When I see the white irises open with their petals freshly anointed in raindrops, and the sun peaking into my grey world with it's warm touch, I can't help but think that my life is echoed and repeated everywhere. Didn't we just flare up in tempers and drama, like a thunderstorm? And haven't we all hugged and talked and made our peace with each other, and basked in the warmth of familial love once again?

I think of these analogies, and remember that there is also a literal and rational interconnectedness of all life forms. I think scientists are just now catching up to what poets know.

"I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves–we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each others' destiny."

-Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

rhodos

There is a special moment when I first see that the hard rhododendron buds have bubbled over into these impossibly red red flowers. I am so happy to merely live as a witness! And though my rational mind says no, it is not so, something larger in me takes these rhodos as a sign, an omen, a message that beauty and happiness are constantly renewing resources, that nothing is ever truly lost, but merely dormant. And so I think that if I do not attach my happiness to this one flower alone, a whole summer of loveliness, surprises, and celebrations is waiting. I will not mourn the tulips as they drop their petals, nor say that only the sunflowers smile. I will wake up and look with amazement at each new form that beauty has taken. I think it will be the best year ever.