Small Surprises

This morning my observant husband brought me a self sown sapling of a walnut tree that had grown in an area covered with hay bales our neighbor gave us last season. So in that protected and somewhat dense environment the walnut sprouted and survived an autumn and a winter and our latest spring season too, all very wet months. This variety is not our favorite as the nut is smaller than some of our other trees but hey, I’m not complaining. This is a gift from Mother Nature and it’s deeply appreciated even though we probably won’t be living here by the time it produces walnuts and in the chance that we are the other trees are already massive and very productive.

The other subtle surprise was just an odd piece of a tree that had been pruned a bit. It was sitting on top of a gigantic stump that John moved from one area to the front garden where the chickens hang out at different times of the day. Being so totally engrossed in my own planting and garden maintenance projects I don’t think I noticed the stump or the pruned wood on top of it for at least a week. But when I did see it and recognize it for what it appears to represent, I was again reminded of how clever my mate is when he gets an idea about something and creates it, then places it in an unobtrusive spot somewhere outside.

John is very self-contained in his artistic endeavors, which he thinks about very carefully beforehand. There is no fanfare needed as opposed to when I create something. But the impact of what he puts together and the placement of these items is quite magical. Quietly he produced a reindeer around Christmas time. How I missed it for so many days is beyond my comprehension. But the gardens have been so overwhelming and the weeds are competing with the trees at this point with all this endless rain. When we should have pruned and raked everything months ago the whole cleanup would have taken half the time or less. Now the growth has overtaken just about everything else that we planted. But even plants we put in are so laden with flowers and new growth that they’re cascading all over our pathways, which are also strewn with weedy bits that just popped up and popped out in every crack of the bricks, seemingly overnight.

These surprises remind me that sometimes it’s just better to put down my tools and not worry about what’s done or what’s not done. Perhaps it’s just time to admire what’s here and not sweat the small details.  My work will never be done in this garden in my lifetime. So it’s probably better to sit and ponder how beautiful the overall space is rather than fret about how messy some areas are. It’s still a knockout place to savor in any weather. We’re so very lucky to be here where walnuts turn into trees when we’re not even looking.