Nature and Me

I am thinking this morning of the simple spiritual things I experienced yesterday.

I mowed the lower meadow where the grasses had grown to twelve or more inches. I’d cut it once already this spring, but its growth exceeded my human schedule what with an abundance of gentle spring rains and warming sunlight. It’s just another reminder that nature does not attune to me, but I must bow to it.

Mowing is a task many of us do in the maintenance of our homes and homesteads. As my machine cut the living grasses and weeds I noticed tiny clumps of Bluets and Lilly Of The Valley flowers. These magnificent clusters of delicate blossoms beautify the meadow with minute flashes of white bell flowers and four blue petals with a yellow stamen on the Bluets. They are so tiny and so beautiful. I had my blade set to four and a half inches so the flowers missed the cut.

I took my time to thank the flowers, grasses and weeds for the grace they give the greening meadow both in their long form and when I cut them short. Every once in awhile I’d get a whiff of an onion aroma as my blade sliced a patch of wild chives; there is nothing like it.

Later as I trimmed some Wisteria vines and pulled some ambient seedlings from the various house gardens, I again thought of man’s proximity and connection to nature’s constant birth and how we attempt to manipulate the natural beauty of spontaneous chaos into the patterned form of our symmetry and color.

And then I watched and listened to the bubbling warble of the House Wrens building their nest in a tiny birdhouse hanging in a Hackberry Tree over the Spirit Garden. Their little brown bodies belie their feisty demeanor and territorial defense.

On the other side of the house, in the eves and beams of a large portico is a Robbins nest, a swallow’s mud hut on top of a ceiling high electrical box, a Turtle Dove nest and in the nine baskets of hanging ferns three families of House Finches have staked their claim and sing their nesting right to all who will listen.

I am reminded again, as I am so often of Shakespeare’s line. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” I hope your days are just as profound.