The Simplicity of Summer Sunflowers

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion.These three are your greatest treasures.

~ Lao Tzu

Greetings to our friends & community,

Barefoot, a bowl of cherries at the ready, I potter about in the garden overwhelmed with the simple beauty of the simple sunflower. A conclave of circumstances conspired this spring, and for the first time in many, many years I didn’t put in much of a garden. In addition to personal circumstances, the drought was a major factor. Where gardening had been a delight and pleasure, suddenly gardening felt like a potential point of struggle that I didn’t feel up to managing. My garden priority was the health of fruit trees and the venerable, old avocado tree I am graced to live with, so the first thing to go were the flowering plants—chocolate cosmos, dahlias—not this year.As the spring progressed, simple volunteer sunflowers popped up everywhere, amongst roses, in potted bougainvillea, where the peppers were last year; reminding me of the beauty of simplicity and working with what is. At first, I pulled them out—they were out of place. And then, to my current delight, I surrendered to them. Where did they all come from? I don’t know.The more trips around the sun I take the more comfortable I become with I don’t know, and the more I delight in what is.May we delight in the simple, have patience with the evolution of human rights and justice, and compassion for those who suffer while the work is being done…Teresa, spirit of Thule, Tucker, Huxley and all at Paradise Found

This is the time. This is the place. Right here is Paradise. Always. Always…

~Byron Katie