I have to admit that we had been lazy this summer and neglected our garden a little bit. A garden is like a mirror of one's spirit. When you feel down and tired, you stop tending your garden and think everything looks fine. But very soon, weeds start creeping in, flowers and fruits are smaller and less, leaves grow too thick and ventilation becomes a problem…We didn't thin the seedlings, and the entire patch did not develop well. One day, we looked around and asked ourselves: what happened? We took a weekend trip to stay at a beachfront hotel. Spent the entire day soaking in the blue ocean under the Florida sun. We saw dolphins and felt fish nibbling our legs and feet. I laughed out loud and felt alive again. On Sunday, we drove 6 hours back home.
The air seemed to be moving again. We went out to our backyard, and did all the deadheading, trimming, fertilizing, composting, staking, mulching, and weeding. I had to compost some of the seedlings and promised we will do it better next time. Our garden is back, waving with the dabbled sun. We sit at our bench by the pond for the first time in the past 2 months. Five waterlilies were blooming. Countless frogs soaked in our bonds. Dragonflies chasing each other, butterflies on butterfly bushes, bees buzzing, hummingbirds chipping, squirrels and chipmunks mumbling under the bird feeders to pick leftover nuts dropped by the feathered friends. I have the desire to paint and write again.
Living in our daily working life, it is so easy to get tired and numb. I was using a magnifying lens to view my work and chores. The backyard garden was like another world that did not belong to me for a while. I guess we still need to train ourselves to take a break, stop what we were doing, look far through the window and walked into nature. After all, we are part of it, or rather, we can be part of it.
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