Waiting (in the garden)
Waiting. Something we are all used to doing. It’s natural, not always easy. While we were embryo’s, waiting to be brought into this world, our mothers were waiting to bring us here. Our fathers were waiting. We waited to start school, to move up a level, to finish school, to start our lives as adults. Sometimes, the waiting was more fun than the actuality. Not usually in the garden.
In the garden, we plan, we plant, we sow. We feel like imitating that well known farmer who went out into the fields every day to pull the tops of his plants, hoping they would grow faster. I know, I am checking daily on a big spire of a gladioli flower to burst into bloom. The first one of the season. It will, but the waiting seems slow when the time is nearly here.
We wait for the flowers, the fruits, the vegetables. The whole ebullience of spring and the harvest of summer. We know when the tomatoes are all ripening, there are courgettes all over the ground and cucumbers in profusion, it’s time to prepare the jars for the pickles, the chutneys, the sauces to carry the taste of the summer through to shut in winter days and nights. Once we’ve made them, we wait impatiently for them to mature, we want to taste them now.
Whilst we are waiting, there is an opportunity. To wait is to experience hope. Use this as a time for a quiet moment, a time of mindfulness. Look at the flower you are waiting to see, notice each day the shape of the stem, the way it changes. As with my gladioli, look at the way each separate bud swells, the way colour starts to show, the way the pre colour can fool you into believing it will be that colour but is another, when the waiting is finally over. Watch the way the sepals hold the flower safe, gradually unfurling as the flower grows, gently releasing it into the world when it is ready.
So in nature, so in life. Wait, quietly. Experience the feeling of waiting, quietly. Know and trust. The waiting will blossom forth into shape in its own time. When the waiting is over, experience the wreath of smiles all over your face. You’ve done it.
