Tuesday, August 7, 2012

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW ?

Your mind is a Garden
Your thoughts are the Seeds
You can grow Flowers
Or you can grow Weeds.
~Spice of Life~

This little poem made thoughts pop into my head like champagne bubbles.  Did it tickle your mind, too?

I'm sure the poem means different things to different readers.  I love that it tells us we are unique and different - though the same and how we can think and be productive in so many different ways....

Millions of people plant seeds and grow beautiful flowers.  Certainly my Thatcher family did as they were nurserymen for several generations.  My siblings and children grow beautiful gardens.  I've tried but, it just isn't my cup of tea.  Perhaps I'm the Thatcher who can grow weeds.

The poem, to me (perhaps in self defense) is more about learning, thinking, evaluating, reorganizing and presenting seeds of thought in a different kind of garden.  For many years I labeled my scribbles 'Seeds of Hope.'  Even in writing, however, I have produced more weeds than flowers....

The message reminds me of multi-talented people like my dad, who was not only the typical working man, but an athlete, a gardener and an artist.  During the winter months, he played ping pong in the basement recreation room he designed and built with recessed lighting (years before such rooms and lighting existed elsewhere).  He forced crocus and tulip bulbs to bloom in the coal bin for fresh flowers on Mother's dining room table.  He painted pictures on the cement walls, including one entire wall depicting trees and a stream of water with strategically placed Peter Pan characters.  Not all the figures began as Peter Pan, however.  One resembled the nymph in the White Rock advertisement, the c.1895 drawing of Phyche by artist, Paul Thurmann.  Another was reminiscent of the famous nude painting by Paul Emile Chabas in 1912, entitled "September Morn."  All were clad in Peter Pan costumes for Dad's mural, however.

If seeds are thoughts we grow in our minds, cannot all the seeds become beautiful in some form?  Does music come from seeds of thought - symphonies, ballet, jazz and ballads?  Or, consider recipes as magic seeds transforming pumpkins into pies, grapes into wine or wheat into bread.  

Can seeds of imagination become inventions - like 'the wheel,' cars, airplanes, space ships, typewriters, pianos or iPods?  Familiar structures must have begun as seeds of thought: caves, homes, Sears Tower, Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument and the Vietnam Wall.  Even weeds produce beautiful flowers in spite of themselves, as cow pastures with Texas Bluebells or the white Queen Anne's Lace and bright orange Butterfly Roost gracing highways.

I leave it to you  to interpret this lovely poem to reflect yourself as the gardener in whatever creative and beautiful form you choose.  Whether hybrid or weed, may your seeds grow with love.

Tell me about your garden.  I'd like to know.... 
~ Nancy yTe ~

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