I planted some kambocha squash starts in the spring and they have grown all over the place. Lots of gigantic leaves and male flowers…but I couldn’t see any female flowers. I felt a sadness like I had failed as a squash gardener. And then yesterday, some friends came to visit and we walked out in the garden and my friend discover a squash that was growing on the vine that had attached itself to my crooked hazel. It was at eye level. My goodness. What I thought was a failure was in an instant a success.

As I walked in the garden, my eyes wandered over the many weeds that are growing in abundance. I had that old familiar feeling of sadness, you know that mind chatter, “my garden is messy, my garden is disheveled, my garden is being taken over, my garden is chaos.” And I look down at the ground and I see a little sow thistle plant, about 4 inches high with a beautiful yellow flower, and I feel comforted.

My garden is a place where every plant can grow. Now don’t get me wrong, I do weed and tend. I create space for elecampane, cabbage, kale, skullcap, lady’s mantle, roses, cronewort, hyssop, lavender, calendula, oatstraw, poppy, goldenrod, comfrey and…..And I also allow the red dock to grow and seed, the dandelion to express, the grasses, oh, the abundant grasses to flower, and the sow thistle with her moon shaped seed heads to flourish.

I am thinking that this is how I would like to be as a human with all beings. Is it possible to love and appreciate all beings for who they are without judging that I am in the wrong place or they are in the wrong place.

I don’t have an answer to this,

I am not even sure where to go with this right now.

But I feel it has something to do with creating

a peaceful world.

May it be in Beauty.