anyone who has known me more than about seven minutes knows that i am rather gung ho about things. when called to gardening, i dug up a few acres of dirt. when called to flower essences, i made seven hundred or so. when i get interested in something, i wade in with activities, books, feasts, questions, embraces.

this makes it easy for me to imagine the meeting with my soul and my angels to plan this accident. i can just hear myself say sure!!! let’s break my arm in thirty pieces and see what i learn. it was so like me to leap off this cliff with complete abandon.

yet, this leap has taken me in new and uncomfortable directions, to the land of the no leap where i can’t do much but be still.

i always thought of myself as a hands on sort of person. yet, with this injury, my soul has asked me to let go of this defining idea of myself. with this leap, i have to let go of long cherished ideas of self and all the activities that bolstered these ideas. every day when i think i have finished this work of letting go, i find more layers to let go of.

at this point, i don’t have a sense of what i will understand of myself on the other side of this letting go process. at this point, i am just grateful that i recognize i am still essentially myself, even as most everything i did as a matter of course each day has been surrendered.

on the practical level, i had no idea how many jobs required two hands. its deja vu all over again to sit at the table like a two year old watching a grown up cut up my food for me. or have someone help me get dressed. or to have my news of the day be that i tried to unbend my fingers.

as i take a back seat to most things at the farm, it is a lovely and delightful to see who and what flourishes in the spaces left by my absence. emily has taken up the bulk of my work in the office with such grace. all the ladies have risen up to the challenges with equal grace and good cheer. it leaves me in awe. lizzy has now left for her own journey to walk the pilgrim trail from france to santiago de compostela in spain. until her departure she cooked up a storm for us. one epic night there was a choice of three desserts. jim, ben, and will join emily in learning a lot they never knew about flowers. a lot!

and in the gardens, there are more surprises as everything that can’t be done yields its own gifts.

a bed of iris i was going to move this spring from its holding spot in the vegetable garden looks sensational just where it is

so much soars with unchecked beauty and some plants i have assiduously weeded out in years past come to the fore as lovely additions to the beds

here, bright yellow celandine, a marvelous flower essence for improving cell to cell communication and helping us be our most vital, informed and connected self, an essence in my drinking water as i type, gets its way, at long last, and moves from the hedgerows of the farm smack dab into the center of the perennial beds where it is helping everything to shine.