Change

"Those people are just afraid of change" he said.

Sometimes I wonder if change has become it's own virtue. WE hear all the time the analogy of shark must swim or it dies.

But what about the brooding hen... If it moves the chicks will die? What about the hibernating bear?

Right now our culture is at incredibly fast rate of change, sometimes the change happens so quickly our culture, our capacity for wisdom can't keep up. Maybe sometimes slow gradual change is best. Maybe sometimes conservation of the traditional, the biological is appropriate. Change is not an absolute virtue.

The universe does not only expand away from itself, there is also gravity. If the 2 forces did not work in complementary opposition then the whole universe would have blown apart in its first moments. It was the slowing and cooling that allowed worlds to form.

Maybe being cautions about change is not a character flaw.

Unruly verdure

This spring my garden has finally grown into what it was meant to be- an unruly mess of green. There are maybe 4 plants back there that i bought at a nursery, all the rest have lived here longer than I have or planted themselves.

I am told a previous resident was quite a gardener, her tiny property bursting with flowers and life every year. But the next owner bought the house to "flip" and when they were doing much-needed renovations and updates, they also laid that black landscape fabric EVERYWHERE with a couple of shrubs poking through. That first spring in this house I was heartened to see tulips, columbines, snowdrops and crocuses peaking their determined heads up along the edges of the fabric. I relocated them from any weird corner of the yard that the landscaper missed and from what would later become the veggie patch. By this 3rd spring, my semi-tidy geometric patterns of tulips and other bulbs have grown into more organic shapes, and Columbines and Sweet Woodruff travel where they please. The Salomon's Seal has filled in the shaded areas so heartily I had to dig some up and give it to a friend yesterday lest it overwhelm the landscaper's azaleas, and the low growing woodland natives I got on my first visit to the native plant nursery that first spring. Those large patches of empty mulch that made up so much of my garden when we first moved in are now completely over-run with green flowering life. Occasionally I go out to "tidy things up" but with the exception of a few errant maple seedlings, all the occupants have received my express invitation. I wondered this morning if I should try to separate the tulips and the columbine a little bit, just to make things look more orderly, but as I've learned the hard way, a plant that is moved during the growing season will most likely stop flowering, and some will just give up on greenery altogether and spend all its energy on its roots.

No, everyone in the garden is riotously happy, and making themselves right to home. As long as they don't start bullying the little guys, they are welcome to party all summer right where they are.