I feel like my garden looks. A bit overgrown, unruly. Goldenrod spreading and hanging over more modest plants. Asters coming into 
their own but falling over as if to spread their beauty. The cherry tomato plant pumping out the last fruit of the season…a little smaller and more irregularly shaped. A bit of chaos I think I should do something about.
Vulnerability
is an interesting visitor. It comes with the unexpected, with events you can’t control. A native plant with its own notions of how it should be, a death, the changes of aging, the space of retirement…. Always there is a perceived loss: of routine, of control, a change that shifts your life in some way you don’t quite understand. If this could happen, what else?
You tighten waiting for the proverbial “other shoe to drop.¨ You feel suspended in the in between times. You long for what you only remember as being neat and orderly.
It’s too easy for me in times of change to try and control everything. I hover over those I care about. I pull in. My mind gallops along, running the race of its life, planning for everything. How do I divide the ‘Autumn Joy’ Sedum, maybe there are native flowers that don’t grow to 6 ft. tall. If I can figure out the perfect plants…
But then I go back out to the garden and remember. The uncontrolled, the wild and untamed can be 
beautiful if you stop thinking it should be something else. If I let go of the “shoulds” about gardens, the memories of how it was when it was new and tame, the fear of what it will morph into, I see the beauty of it just as it is. It’s the judging that robs the seasons of their beauty, and most importantly, their place in life.
Fall teaches us to hold on lightly, to let go of what’s done, to love what is. I’m letting it sink in.
Lovely thoughts Mother Nature gave you.
Thanks…Mother Nature is generous.
Vulnerability: Ah. The ego’s nemesis. And Fall swings its blade at all the wild creations of Summer with careless wanton abandon, or perhaps strokes its brush over emerald greens to transport them into burnished auburns and brilliant reds with hot pink edges.
Vulnerability: Awe. The random chaos that happens as cool winds chill summer nights and tomatoes rot on the ground. As new seeds lay in the Earth, as old skins cover them from snow.
Vulnerability: Acceptance. That old memories come back and new ones are born in this moment. They may or may not fit but they exist regardless. It is the judging that swings its blade and cuts at the thing but changes nothing in the cutting. It is the acceptance that transforms the black and white past into a golden gilded present full of brilliant everything and decaying all. The death and birth are all in the NOW, cannot even be separated into TWO different seasons, not really. OLDNEW OLDNEWNOW OLDNEWNOWOLDNEWNOW!!!!!
Nice!
Yum! I LOVE this one! It came with me when I reached through the tangle of tomato branches … and reminded me, when I cursed the squirrels’ industry, that I needed to let go and love what is. Thank you.