Bloom Beholding & Life Tending 🌨☀️🌷

Bloom Beholding & Life Tending

Hello Reader

There's a lot of heavy, hard-to-hold stuff going on in the world as we shift into spring. This week's Ground Notes hopes to offer simple ways we can still make space and time for what's good, for what remains bright, and buoyant.

If you're enjoying these simple weekly touch points with nature, I'd appreciate your support in inviting a friend to join us as a subscriber/reader/nature-curious explorer.

Cheers,

Jennifer

Founder, Ordinary Nature

Weekly Reflection 🌨☀️✨
Weekly Practice 🌷🌺✨
Little Tender Things 🐿💚

I believe this is a type of crabapple bloom, but still locating the specific name

WEEKLY REFLECTION

Bloom Beholding & Life Tending

Jennifer Ruth Keller

The public gardens behind our local library are basically where, aside from our backyard, my daughter and I have explored together the most for nearly seven years.

Before she could walk, I'd carry her on me, tracing the paths through different seasons' gifts. She learned to walk here. To clamber over rocks. To find the cozy spots of refuge beneath the drooping branches of small ornamental willows and weeping pines.

Last week we spent a couple hours in the gardens, her now on a bicycle, trying to stay far ahead of me, looking for new trees to climb and hidden passages to savor.

It's happened far faster than my body could register, even as my mind has seen it happening across the years, even as I basically knew it a couple weeks after she came out of my body: She is of the world, and I am a roving anchor point to offer love, sustenance in myriad forms, and delight in her presence.

Close-in, far-out, mid-range. Close-in, far-out, mid-range. There's an organic rhythm to the tending, the beholding, the engagement with my daughter. And how I explore that rhythm with the natural world has been a way to cultivate how I can better offer it to her.

Yes, we behold and smell the blooms simply because it's a good and delightful thing to do. And we behold and smell the blooms, we visit and revisit what it means to see, and hear, and smell, and allow because how we tend the blooms is also how we can tend the rest of life.

first rhododendron blooms of the season, a Washington highlight

WEEKLY PRACTICE INVITATION

The what: Bloom beholding & Delight tending

If you are in a part of the world where blooms are bursting forth, great! If you are not, this practice may be more available when that begins over the next weeks in your location. And/or I've included photos you can work with as well.

Find a nearby park, public garden, meadow, or neighborhood where the bounty of spring is brimming and bursting.

This is a practice that can be done slowly, but might also inspire random running from example to example.

What buds or blooms strike your eye and your heart and draw you toward them in delight?

Stroll or roam around the space, the terrain, and gather in as many bloom-delight experiences you can. This is one time when hoarding, or stocking away sensory-rich memories, is encouraged!

Get to know each bloom through your major senses, going slowly and savoring each dimension of experience. (Touch is okay, though we try to be gentle and leave the bloom on the tree or plant.)

When you feel delight-soaked, and if its doesn't feel intrusive or interruptive of your experience, consider making some kind of field notes as a reminder to return to, for days when you are in need of simple delight.

Could be photos. Or sketches. Or an inventory with brief descriptions (and totally fine to invent your own creative flower names; for this you don't need to stress about proper naming.)

Bloom time = Heart uplift. Even twenty minutes can make an impact. Even trying this with images in the dark can be a way to gather in some delight at the end of a day.

Explore & experiment and let me know what happens!