While in our minds Spring may feel like an event, it is, in fact, part of the continuum of the Earth’s response to its proximity to the Sun. Subtle changes occurring at the cellular level as the minutes of daylight increase.

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If I had to choose one word for this season it would be “wonder.” Wonder at the resilient little green shoots popping up from the frozen ground, wonder at the diversity and symmetrical perfection of each new blossom, wonder at their array of colors.

And so, to begin this season of wonder, a fabulous pink and white tulip from the just ended Spring Bulb Show at the Lyman Conservatory at Smith College. And, beneath that, a piece by Rachel Carson from her book The Sense of Wonder.

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A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the source of our strength.

Rachel Carson
The Sense of Wonder

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Fuller's Teasel - Frosty Treble Clef

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So, just for a moment, I remember to step back into the garden. There’s not much there right now for those of us in the North, but there’s enough to remind us of another pace.

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Buddha

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Everything is Energy

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So if everything is everything, and everything is energy, where do, say, the petals of a flower end and where does light begin?

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But in the Fall, once the flowers have faded, and the almost all plants have withered from the cold temperatures and lack of light, and when the leaves have fallen from the trees, it seems more difficult to see beauty around us (…at least until the first snowfall!). Unless, of course, we re-think what beauty is and learn to see the world we thought we knew in different ways.

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Davinci's Vatruvian Man (source: Wikipedia)

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Consider first, as DaVinci and others have suggested, that one of the foundations of beauty is symmetry: “the imprecise sense of harmonious or aesthetically pleasing proportionality and balance such that it reflects beauty or perfection.” (Wikipedia) If that definition holds then, relying primarily on symmetry, and not flowers or vibrant colors, here are a couple of images of Fuller’s Teasel in the Fall – you can decide if they’re beautiful of not.

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Fuller's Teasel in the Fall

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Fuller's Teasel Leaf

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If they are, then maybe there’s life in our gardens (and along roadsidesand streams, and in fields…) after the first frost, and after the days are much shorter than the nights and after most everything has died back into dormancy for the Winter. Maybe there’s a different kind of beauty there just waiting for us to see it.

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This work is licensed under a
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