Things had been bad for me. I couldn’t even go for a run, something I loved to do, because of a serious leg injury. So I took up walking. And as I walked the streets of my neighbourhood at a slower and less laborious pace than when I ran the roads, I took the opportunity to admire the gardens.
Some were unkempt – meadows of grasses sometimes green, sometimes not; wild-sown weeds cramming every available space; fences riddled with kikuyu that had run amok in their sheltered warmth. No piece of dirt was left alone.
Others were structured – green lawns and roses, agapanthus and an occasional tree. Still others were a sprawling space of flowering plants and shrubs, the lawn a long-gone memory, colours running riot as the plants filled every nook and many crannies.
In all their diversity, the gardens were doing their own unique job. The variety of the plants meant there was something for every differing microclimate, every soil condition, every sunlight scenario. They were anchoring the topsoil so it wouldn’t be whipped away by the wind, digging their roots in deep to break up the dirt and move around nutrients, oxygenating the air. They constantly threw their seeds to the breeze, bloomed for the bees, and decomposed to feed the next generation.
Regardless of their owners’ capacity to work their plot, the gardens all merely continued their cycle of joy and beauty, work and purpose.
There is something so exquisitely healing about nature. Its ability to just get on with it, to persevere and stand up to rough conditions, to plunder resources but also to relentlessly give back, ignites a primal urge to do the same.
My leg injury healed, and so did my determination to chart my own blooming unique path.
Joni Page 