The Harvest and Flowers

 My love of growing food and flowers competes and overlaps with my love of painting.    I stop in wonder and amazement at the beauty of things growing in my garden and at the “Food Sharing Garden” where I spend my time every Tuesday morning throughout the spring and summer months.   We grow food for a local food hub and other charities, where people in need can come and purchase inexpensive but healthy produce.

Being involved for the duration of the season means I am able to witness the tiny seeds being planted indoors in pots and outdoors once the soil is warm and ready.  Slowly, they pop their heads out though the dark soil and then, with our tender and careful nurturing they are eventually ready for harvesting and delivery.

Observing this process has given me a new sense of the wonder and appreciation for the magic of nature.   To think that packed into each small seed is the genetic code to grow and blossom into what they were meant to be, the seed harvested from the mother plant with the same identical code.  They grow and bloom on their own secret schedule and in spite of us, do this in the same order and pattern each time.

I photograph flowers everywhere I notice them growing, whether wild or in the garden at home.  Growing flowers is equally magical – their shapes, colors and scents are overwhelming in their perfection and beauty.  Looking at them can be mesmerizing and intoxicating, their pattern and designs swirling together to create mandalas of sweet images so pleasing to the eye.

The joy of growing reconfirms my strong suspicion there is a divine order to the universe; an order that breaths and survives in spite of me and my meagre and gentle interventions, in an already perfect and glorious system!