The stuff of gardens and compost

photo credit

I wrote yesterday about the ascents and dips of life, of how quickly these change and we are thrown into movement, from one moment to the next.  And life is not always like this, I know, but maybe if you've been there or live here, as I have the past several years, you get it.  It seems the more I practice abandoning myself to the moment, the more I open myself to both richer joys and deeper pain. 

The tricky part is how to find a steady place in these highs and lows, so we're not continually tossed about.  

And though yesterday's post wasn't necessarily uplifting or wrap-you-in-a-blanket cozy, it was in the moment real, reaching for hope.

The process of growth isn't always linear.  In fact, it rarely is.  I see it traced in words, etched through my posts of the last two months, this hope bubbling up from darkness, and I know it's there.  Growth and life and tender shoots of joy.  And I know, too, as it is here in Seattle, there are many lurching steps to spring.  The transition between seasons is never linear here.  It's twenty degrees one week, snow the next, and back to fifty degrees.  It's snow dusting on cherry blossoms in January.  

A customer who knows about my blog but couldn't remember the name of it commented recently, "You should change the name.  It has something to do with garbage, right?  Kinda weird."

No, dear customer.  That's not weird at all.  It's the life behind the words I write, this glory trail of highs and lows, mundane and wonder-filled, composting together in a heap of earth, until what saturates the soil is hope and what shoots up is beauty.  

It's the stuff of vibrant gardens, fragrant flowers, rich soil and food that nurtures souls.

Beautiful rubbish is what I call it, because it is how my eyes are adjusting to see life through all its seasons.  And all these moments?  They're fodder for this compost heap that saturates the plot of land where our garden grows. 

. . . . . . . . . .

Joining Lisa Jo, to the prompt of "Garden."