Stories
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
This workbook is not about becoming a better gardener; it is about becoming a better observer.
Read one essay.
Do one exercise.
Spend a week with it.
Don’t hurry.
June 26, 20256
The garden of attention
EVERYBODY HAS DREAMS, CHERISHED DESIRES OF THEIR HEART, THE “ONE DAY I’LL” STORY.
Often life gets in the way and worries and responsibilities take ownership of pieces of your life like squirrels store nuts for winter, forgetting where they hid more than half the stash.
The unused life pile grows with age, that coffee you never drank on the patio when the sun was shining brightly through the blooming lilacs, that time when you couldn’t go to the zoo with the children, that craft project still sitting in a box in your basement or attic, waiting for someday.
Our lives are made of reallocated somedays, of somedays that could have been, if only.
Take a moment, no longer than your schedule allows without adding stress, to pick one of these “someday” projects out of storage and actually do them.
Nobody bothers to weigh the value of the unfulfilled little wishes happiness is made of, and sometimes there is nothing in their way, nothing more than our getting accustomed to let them go.
Yes, your children will laugh at your knitting, and your conscience will poke you repeatedly as you savor your latte on the porch while the dishes are waiting.
Pick up that book you wanted to read for ten years, find your brushes and gouaches, paint the Adirondack chairs purple.
This is one of my ‘one day i’ll’ stories: every time I browsed through the numerous books about landscaping and garden design I wished I could see images like this in my yard.
Of course it takes just the right light and time of day, and the camera adds its own magic, but dreamscape it is.
Now, about that latte…
-Love: allyeargarden
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