On Beauty, and Why Gardening isn't Always Just Utility.

“On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.”
― Rumi

Gardening for me always seems to be a balance between utility and beauty. We always wanted to grow as much food as we could to supplement our diets, so the vegetable garden is indeed central to our place - I can literally walk out the back door straight into the vegetable patch and collect herbs and vegies for dinner, and even rhubarb for winter soups. It's functional - the path up the middle is made of pavers so I can walk out in socks if I choose, and find my way to the compost heap without getting my ugg boots muddy. The worms there eat our scraps, the chicken manure gets layered between straw and garden waste, and the compost goes back into the garden. Pure utility. I love it. It's a system that works and provides for us.

Yet if gardening was merely function for me, I wouldn't enjoy it half as much. Our garden is far more than just this. Many of the plants we grow aren't food for us at all, but food for the bees and birds, which in turn bring much to our garden. It wouldn't function as well without it, although I could do without the parrots stealing my nectarines and plums, and the magpies eating my strawberries. But even if the insects and avian life weren't tempted by the grevilleas and banksias and kangaroo paws and other flowering plants in our garden, we'd still grow them because they are aesthetically divine. Australian natives are vastly different from the beautiful flowering plants I'm seeing celebrated in the northern hemisphere. If it's those flowers that tickle your fancy, please do read @sagescrub's gorgeous post on why they grow flowers in their garden - it's totally beautiful! She writes:

One of the most enjoyable activities I do every morning and evening is to stroll into the garden, clippers in hand, and arrange my own bouquet of flowers. Our home is constantly filled with flowers and they bring joy to everyone who come visit us. Just this alone is reason enough for me to grow flowers.

---

And ain't that the truth - flowers bring us pure joy.From the South African leucodendron (one for you, @buckaroo - I knew there was another thing!) that flowers here pretty much all year around to the seed pods left over from flowering banksia to the splashes of red and purple of various grevilleas and the bright yellow calendula (which grows here all winter, little splashes of sunshine) both the birds, the bees and me get a lot of joy from these beautiful plants. This weekend I planted ten more in gaps in the garden, feeling the excitement of the future where my efforts would burst into bloom. The ground recieves the plant, and nurtures it, and loves it until it bursts forth to delight us. But we've got to plant it and nurture the ground back, lest we're left bereft, with deserts and wasteland.

“The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.”

― Rumi

Yet it's more than this. We're yet to get into Spring here in Australia, and there's still an aesthetic beauty in our garden that I find harmonious and balancing. It's this harmony we have created in our garden that is capable of transporting me to a different mind set, a kind of distraction which makes me forget the shackles of life. It's an expanded awareness that pulls me out of myself into an appreciation of the beauty around me, and for a moment I can access that harmony within myself too. And when we're pulled out of ourselves, sometimes we get little glimpses of the divine, sparks of pure love that refract back in to our hearts centre, and back out again - a perfect unity with all that is.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

― Rumi

This cultivation of beauty is as important to me as growing plants to feed us. It's a kind of pleasure that includes all things that have a kind of perfection and symmetry, a pleasing architecture or grace, just as we would appreciate a painting or a beautiful building. The flash of gold against the gong bought in Burma. The whip of the windhorses in the cold wind. Rocks brought back from the beach, shells on strings. The fractal delight of small cactuses. An antler, found in a forest in England. A winding path lined with volcanic rocks. Hindu deities keeping watch. All of these things work together to make my heart swell with joy, and peace come to my heart.

And so, the garden becomes a canvas for my heart's needs, in a way. A splash of colour with flowers there, a mirror surface of water in the pond where tangerine goldfish flit and eat mosquito larvae, the tactile surfaces of many river and ocean rocks, some pockmarked with larva holes from eons ago, some smoothed, some cut through with quartz. Splashes of turmeric coloured lichen, bone white shells, a bird's skull. The pretty whispering of bamboo, the rustling of the blue wrens in the elder trees. The spiked architectural leaves of aloe, seed pods of banksia, a windchime or two - an aural harmony of bells and birdsong. All shifting, all fluxing with the seasons, the maple red in the Autumn and bright lime in the Spring, the coming baby pinks of the blossoms soon with the growing light.

If I could capture it, somehow, and give you this - you would see my beautiful heart, the one not covered with the worries of life, but the bright one, the one like bird song.

---

---

If you're a supporter of all things natural healing, you might like to read our introductory post here. We'd also love to welcome you on Discord here!!