#azelias

No matter how far I go, I always return to a central feature of my personal garden; writing.

I had the opportunity to visit Vancouver, B.C. for the first time a few weeks back.

It was a work trip, so I was tempted to shut myself in my hotel room other than the daily obligations, but I was pulled out into the world with the rumor of a beautiful park just a few miles away.

Stanley Park offered a much-needed reprieve from worker/performance mode. I was most excited to visit with the rhododendron garden the map promised I'd find within the park. The flower garden was more than I could have dreamed. A vibrantly multi-colored patch singing in shades of pink, white, purple, fuchsia, and red, with green leaves all lush and bushy, some were as tall as trees.

I've been missing the annual bloom of azalea and other rhododendron kin, since moving to southern Arizona in 2023.

I grew up along side them and they are some of the first flowers I remember being fascinated and inspired by. Many heart-blazing writing sessions went down on their whimsical watch.

Standing among them, I felt an overwhelming sense of creative power building all around me. Rhododendron reminds us how crucial uniqueness is to nature and the world. The kind of shining that comes naturally doesn't take study, or striving, or masking, although I am certain that every year the flowers try to give their best face. These brilliantly colored and theatrically made flowers are natural performers. They didn't have to try to stop anyone in their tracks with their gorgeous dresses and fairy-like forms, it simply is that way.

For a few years now, I've been caught in the vines of striving, studying, perfecting. I'm grateful for all I've learned, the teachers, and the community I've gained.

I'm also ready to cut loose from the twisting branches and claim my beingness. Although I'm still a novice gardener, when it comes to the little piece of soil I've cultivated inside myself, I feel the steady fertile ness that comes from walking and working the landscape.

I know enough to know now, that everything I needed, was literally already here, covered in dirt, tucked away behind thick groves of trees.

I thought I needed to become something different to be of service in this world. I considered all the many ways I could train and change to be what was useful and yet I neglected the sacred wisdom of the rhodedendron in this way of thinking.

There is usefulness in everything, even beauty for the sake of pure wonder and inspiration is useful.

That is how it feels for me to write. There is no end goal, although I have many dreams and intentions. There is no why other than the simple pleasure of creating.

Fiction writing is a key aspect of my heart's way of creating. It is something I have done for my entire life and after years of searching for purpose, for specialness, for how to best be in service, I've surrendered to what I know to be true.

My heart's desire is to write stories.

Springtime in the National Arboretum