“Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.” —Thomas à Kempis
I often, sometimes 3 times a week, visit my local organic farm shop. There I meet people who like me also find ‘therapy’ in just hanging around this lovely setting. The little wooden type shack where the produce is on display, lovingly nurtured until it is ready to harvest is a feast for the eyes. There is an appreciation for the effort it takes to keep vegetables going without using chemical sprays and I recently watched as the farm hands carefully weeded round the vegetables.
Conversations are had with like-minded people who appreciate the surroundings of this lovely place; the fields of green, the plum trees heavy with fruit and the sound at this time of year of the bees and butterflies delighting in the rows of beautiful flowers. Time passes, we leave refreshed and with a feeling of being abundantly blessed.
Appreciation and gratefulness comes with the seemingly small treasures in my week and as I wandered around my sister’s allotment where the gardeners have produced such beautiful inspiring lovingly tended plots a sense of calm and peace washes over.
The intricate beauty of the sunflower and artichoke is just wonderful and only when you take time to really look do you see things you might never have noticed before. The disk of little flowers crowded together that make up the centre of the sunflower. I had never taken the time to look closely and to be honest have often thought of them as perhaps a bit tall and ungainly, a competition flower of height. I was wrong.
We picked blackberries, hazelnuts, plums, apples and rosehips, chatting about how lucky we were to be able to experience the harvesting. We talked of how in times gone by these would have been picked and stored and used wisely. The treasures we took home were more rewarding than any purchases on a shopping trip.
All around us blessings abound if we just take time to tune in.
On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it ~ Jules Renard
