Watching Things Grow

I usually go out to the patio with my camera in the evening or early morning. But I don’t take photos when the sun is shining down because they look bleached out.

I hang my camera around my neck so that my hands are free to touch the flowers, snip off a cucumber, deadhead a petunia.

Above is a hosta flower opening up its delicate layers. Every year the flowers are bigger and more layered.

Charlie sniffs around and moves in and out of the plants. Sometimes disappearing altogether in the forest of plants I have pushed together to avoid heat burning the leaves.

A few tomatoes have ripened might be ready to eat tonight. I will remind myself to pick them later to have with my supper.

The cucumber vines wind their way around anything within reach. That’s how it’s growing up into the tree. One has wrapped around the stem of a zinnia. It is holding it tightly in its grasp, bending the flower over.

I go in and get my garden snips and delicately pull the thin curling vine away from the zinnia to free it.

You wouldn’t think something that thin would have the strength to grip a flower that tightly.

I find it all amazing. All the things that make up a garden. The way things grow and bloom and recede in the winter and come back in the spring.

I’ve always been fascinated with the workings of nature, preferring the silence to the outside world.

Feeling joy when I see that a seed has germinated and pushed up above the dirt. Like a ray of sun reached down and lifted it up.

And then there’s Ivy peeking through the French doors just beyond the water fountain.

She watches Charlie and me.

Occasionally I have opened the door to see what she’d do and she tends to run away from the door. Obviously frightened by the outdoors beyond the apartment walls.

This is the world I live in. Two pet babies and lots of green things growing that either delight my eye or feed me at mealtime.

With all that’s going on in the world, this little spot is a haven where I can forget it all for awhile and just watch things grow.

A peaceful place where I can pause and reflect and gain strength to face whatever comes next.