My garden smells so fragrant, full of life and the buzzing of bees, a riot of colour and the fullness of vegetables grown out of a flowering bud.  i love that.  All my plants bring me such joy but this one, this pretty little tea rose bush is special,

this is the very first plant my husband and i put into the earth.  When we bought our house, we never really looked at the yard only the house.  I was one of those people who walked into the front door and started jumping up and down laughing, this is the house.  I just knew because she welcomed me with an energy that said, I am yours, you will be happy here and she was right.  We wrote our offer in the bright old fashioned kitchen and happily skipped away.  We saw our house on the day it went on the market and by that afternoon, there were five other offers.  I spent days without breathing, waiting for those words which eventually came.  We got the house.  A month later, worn and weary and only 2 months after our twins died, we moved in.

A couple of weeks in and I felt like we had made a horrible horrible mistake.  It didn't smell like us.  It didn't feel like us and there was so much work to do.  There seemed to be an endless amount of dust everywhere, covering the floorboards, blackening our feet, perhaps leftover from ripping the rugs out but no matter what we did, there it was.  In time, it went away and in time our smells filled the rooms with colour and art and incense and baking and life and what I saw that first day became the reality.  She comforted us as we spent the year hiding and grieving and then learning how to live and even in the darkness, her windows poured in more light than we thought possible.

But.  If the house needed work, the yard.  Oh my, the yard.  It was a jungle of weeds and tree stumps and bug infested bushes gone wild.  I can't even begin to tell you how many tears I shed when I realized that our yard had been sorely neglected for some 20 years.  There were layers upon layers of dead thatch under the strawlike grass which seems to breed bugs and weeds and in all honesty, I had never gardened before.  I didn't even know where to start.  We didn't own any tools and I had no idea what we even needed.  Daunting.

So, that first summer, we didn't do much.  I learned about thatch and inherited my grandfather's big metal and wood rake, ancient and powerful.  I mowed and weed whacked and people gave us pots filled with flowers and plants and I watched them die and that was it.  Over the winter, I bought a few gardening books but they all assumed some mystical magical green thumb knowledge that I didn't have.  I looked at pretty pictures and yards of paradise but had no idea how to begin.  It would cost a fortune that I didn't have.  Then I discovered, You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail and I was inspired.  I would just go for it.  I was going to grow things even if I had no idea how. 

So off we went to one of the many greenhouses that I now frequent and the first thing we picked out was a rosebush.  A tea rose bush of all things.  It sat on a table in my backyard for a good month, slowly dying as I procrastinated what to do.  I finally decided something had to be done so I picked up a shovel and dug a hole in the grass, and plunked it in, covered it with more dirt, watered it and wondered if it would survive.  We were so proud of ourselves and that little bush which not only stayed green but bloomed beautiful roses well into September.  Everyone cautioned us that we had purchased a needy plant and it likely wouldn't survive our frigid snow covered frozen -30C winter but it did and last Fall it still had a riot of blooms well into October.

I now have a big (I used to say small but when Celeste came to visit, she confirmed that it was not small but rather large for a city garden, I clearly have no perspective) vegetable garden and I have plunked in flowers and plants all over my yard, more and more every year.  And yes, it is that easy, just dig up the grass and plunk them in, cover with dirt and watch them get bigger and bigger every year.  I have a long way to go but I want to eventually eradicate every square inch of my lawn which I did manage to bring back to life but its a full time job that gives me little satisfaction.  My lovely husband and my father managed to dig out each and every horrid tree stump and bug infested bush in the front yard and along the sides of the house.  There is still a weed infested nightmare behind the fence by the driveway which we are planning on dealing with next year when we put in a new fence and reclaim that part of the yard.

I never imagined myself a gardener and I used to joke I had a black thumb but I have to say, I love it.  While my yard appeared to be a nightmare, I learned that beneath the surface, it was filled with beauty, rich black dirt filled with worms and nutrients and oh so much beautiful potential.

potential.  my little house (no skewered perspective on that one, it is a little house which is environmentally perfect for us) and my little yard (with its big veggie garden) had a whole lot of potential and that is what my heart felt when I first walked through the door.  I think if we listen to the emotion of spirit that comes through, we find that most things and everybody has that beautiful potential. Sometimes, its just a matter of looking more closely around the tattered edges that are sometimes a result of this life we live.  If we put some elbow grease and take the time to spread kindness and love, we can shine up that which had dulled with neglect.

Gardening has become a beautiful metaphor for my life and as I tend and change and grow my garden, I tend and change and grow myself.

peace and love.