An Untamed Garden

I find it so amusing how our western culture loves neat and tidy yards; manicured lawns, clearly marked out flower beds, nothing infringing on the others space. "A place for everything, and everything in its place!" This can feed over into our friendships/relationships. We can try and control how our friendships "look" in the garden of our lives. We can prune, manicure, transplant, weed out. We don't want anything to be messy or overgrown. Maybe we even "bonsai" our friends, and put them in pretty little pots to display. I have a book called "Dream Gardens". I find that I prefer the gardens in the book that are natural looking, not too manicured or planned. The ones that even look a bit overgrown and busy. I want this in my garden of friendships too! I want my friends to know that they have a place in my garden. They can find their place and take up space. They can grow where they want.

Two parts of my garden this year that are my favorite are two places I planned the least. They just happened. One is that a "pretty" weed (is this an oxymoron?) started growing between my pavers. I tried growing other "plants" (that I paid money for!) between them, to no avail. But this weed just started to find its place there. The second thing is the mass of happy sunflowers growing out back (I see them framed in my family room window each day). They are everywhere. I did not plant them, they just grew as a surprise. I want my life to be overgrown with friends. I do not want a neat and tidy life, with clearly marked out beds, marking where things can and cannot be - I want to be there for people, even when it can get messy or painful. I want to tend this garden but not to control it. I want to just sit back and enjoy the way it intermingles; a work of art I did not create on my own.