This is the time of the year when every gardener worthy of the name (and some who aspire to it) start receiving seed and plant catalogs in the mail, tempting them with page after page of beautiful flowers, luscious veggies, and all manner of foliage that they are sure will make the garden of their dreams a reality. While the garden sleeps, gardeners plan.
I always wondered if Mother Nature does the same thing. Of course she doesn't receive seed catalogs in the mail (at least I don't think she does but who knows), but I always wondered if she looked back at all that she had grown over the past year and decided what stayed, what she'd pull out, and what she'd improve upon. Did those new flowers in the southwest holdup to the heat? Did the new hybrid veggies in the northeast stand up to the early frosts they get up there? And what about those areas devastated by fire this past year? What was she going to plant to help them come back? What would she grow in the ashes?
I like to think of this time of year, while the world sleeps under the cover of ice and snow, as a time to do some inner gardening. Curled up under a blanket, with a cup of something hot in our hands, we can create out own catalog of dream seeds, those things we want to plant in the new year to help our inner gardens to thrive. What needs to be pulled out? What didn't grow the way we thought it would - or should - and what did? Where do we need to turn over our inner soil and start something new? If our life was a catalog, what would we want to see on the pages that, if planted and nurtured, would give us a garden of life full of beauty and a harvest beyond our imaginations? Perhaps, as the world sleeps, we can use this time the way Mother Nature uses hers.
This year especially, let's start planning our inner garden way before the snow melts and the first buds appear on the trees. By the time the world wakes up and warms up to spring, we would already have the first tiny buds of our inner garden poking through the ashes, ready to make our lives and the world a more beautiful place to be.
And so it is.
