There is poetry among the wildflowers.”
Rachel Irene Stevenson, writer
Life, like a garden, can be both beautiful and chaotic
I wasn’t sure I’d like the coneflowers. The seed packet tells me the flowers grow to 18 inches, but the plants fool me and grow four feet. And the birds are helpful. Every year they snatch the seeds and between dropping them throughout the garden, while at the same time using my garden as their bathroom, I have coneflower bushes growing in several places.
I don’t mind, really. I had decided to plant a tamer wildflower garden this year, but just as the name “wild” suggests, it’s become like a teenager determined to rebel and do what it wants. In addition to the multiple coneflower bushes growing (which I’ve decided I like after all), my wild geranium took root this year (finally!), and spread itself so that I have lost count as to all the places it is growing. The cracks in my sidewalk look better than ever.
The larkspur has grown heavy and multiplied, and yet, I don’t remember planting them. But grow they have, in different shades of purple, along with white. Even my coreopsis has fooled me. I have stalks growing to over five feet tall, and at first glance, the leaves suggested cosmos, but they are indeed coreopsis. I forget the many varieties of coreopsis.
The yarrow and larkspur have added more white color (is white a color?) to the yard, which glows in the evening. In the morning, I love to look out from my window at the table and admire the variety of white, purple, red, orange, and pink. When I step outside, I listen to the birds sing their morning tunes. The bees are happily floating from one plant to the next, collecting their daily pollen rations. And I reflect that despite the craziness of life, creation calms me.
Sometimes I forget the importance of beauty, and pausing to enjoy it, which is why I must be in it. Amid the daily writing, weekly rejections, and hourly brow beatings, the chaotic growth of the garden is a reminder that chaos still breeds beauty. All the fragmented pieces come together, and though it takes time, in the end, the garden is full and lush. So in the end of the daily writing grind and constant doubt, comes meaningful poetry and stories neatly shaped from the fragmented pieces of life.
Life can be like a wildflower garden. It doesn’t necessarily grow as planned. Sometimes challenges you don’t anticipate appear, much like the flowers that appear haphazardly in the cracks in the sidewalk.
I like to leave the flowers where they grow. I wait to see what they will become, how they will thrive and survive. And so often are life’s unexpected trials. Sometimes they turn into something beautiful and colorful. I just have to be patient and see what appears.
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