Loving the Weather!

It was a drizzly grey late spring morning when I opened the door and poked my nose out. At this time of year the vegetable and flower gardens are always calling. It smelled amazing, awake, and alive and the decision to put boots on and go out made it self. Moments later, as I stood over one of the garden rockeries admiring my handiwork a shift in perspective came through. For years I have worked with these same perennials, shifting the Lily collection from one spot to another, the delphiniums, liatris, daffodils, and tulips, everybody in that rockery has more than once grown legs and transplanted themselves.

And then I knew. I felt how they had taught me, it wasn’t my doing, I had simply acted as their legs. It was the plants, the trees, the weeds and grasses, the dirt and air and water that has been teaching me since the first time I conceived of planting a garden. For forty years the plant kingdom has taken me under its wing and supported my fledgling attempts at working with them. They have taught me where to place each of them in relationship with the others, who is needy and who needs to be ravaged. My mind is rarely involved, though I have a library of gardening books. They teach me through my body, my senses, and mostly they teach through our mutual love affair.

Now with beginners’ eyes I view the scene, the same garden rockeries, the same trees, sky, air, rain, and nothing is the same. The shapes and colors, the smells, everything shone. My heart began beating that gratitude song until it poured out my mouth. Thank you to the nasturtiums and pansies, thank you gladiolas and dahlias, thank you to the peach tree. Thank you Life for the Grace called rain showering down upon me today.


In this part of the world the weather is the first thing we talk about when we get together. These days I hear a lot of complaining, it’s too cold, wet, hot, dry, flooding, windy. Behind those complaints I feel the fear and realize the weather is the recipient of that projected fear. If we subscribe to the idea of Oneness with All of Life we’ve forgotten that we are the weather. We want control but we don’t want responsibility. We’ll believe conspiracy theories about the bad guys using weather conditions as a weapon before we’ll accept responsibility for the weather we’re experiencing. We’ll believe that the Earth Herself wants to destroy us without spending a moment to consider the idea, the possibility that we have a part in creating the very weather we’re complaining about.