Nurture

Or a Happy Hebe.

Long conversation with Flower Spirit tonight about just what the heck nature (or wilderness) is. You see I've been sort of lured into this sitting lark because all my friends seem to be much more attuned to the outdoors than me. They keep INVITING me and I go along - and usually enjoy the ride.

But sitting out there on my own, just for the sake of it? It's not called a CHALLENGE for nothing. Linda helpfully compared sitting to meditating and that gave me a whole new frame of reference.

The breeze was off the sea today and it was much cooler so I sat by the house to have my lunch. The bees were still buzzing but they looked so different when I considered they might be looking for nest sites - very methodical, very efficient. Bees on a mission.

Then I began to fret about what nature actually was - did this hebe I'd bought from the garden centre and nurtured along for four years count as nature? The seawall, hewn from some hillside, moulded to shape, withstanding the waves for over a hundred years, perch for humans, birds, water-fowl, occasional cats; home to a host of lichen, limpets and seaweed - man-made but was the seawall nature too? Suddenly everything was nature.

And then the strangest thing. After the last client at around 6.30 I just could not stay indoors! I had to see if the Pied Wagtail was there, see what the crows were up to, see if the wind had dropped.

So I sat not once but twice today for maybe an hour and half all told. The birds began to gather in the tree behind me, they wouldn't come near yesterday. Poppa Duck came and shouted at me. I gave him food - way too much food - and he settled to snooze, stuffed and stupefied amidst the feast not three feet away. And the sky, that vast, ever-changing cocoon - that too was nature and it nurtured me today.

Sweet dreams to blippers everywhere.

Oh you are mine and I could not possess you
No more possess the wind, the sun, the silver dawn of eons.

PS just got a great link about bees from Flower Spirit - thanks honey!