Winter Sunshine

What a treat to have temperatures up to 20 in February!

An unexpected bonus!

One that inspired me to take the bike out the shed, pump the tyres up and actually go cycling. Fabulous!

How different life feels when the sun surrounds us. 

Last Friday I cycled out to a local garden centre where I proceeded to set up my office at one of their outdoor tables. What a delight to be outside amongst the plants, roaming hens and glorious blue skied lushness. I certainly wasn’t prepared to be sat inside unnecessarily.

Saturdays’ sunny beams even inspired me to get out in to the garden to remove all things dead to make room for all things new. Thus my garden is now a blank canvas ready for all I will plant within it during the new season.

As I worked, I was accompanied by the sound of others in their own gardens all around me; children playing, older children mowing lawns and all generally enjoying the opportunity to be out in the fresh air following months of central heating induced stuffiness.

The air felt light and the atmosphere jovial.

I even had a mid gardening cup of tea and snooze in the garden complete with the cat on my lap. In the name of developing my art of doing nothing!

It’s all about the simple pleasures!

Anyway, where the earlier days of the week had started hazily, Sunday’s sunshine summoned me out for an 8am run. And it’s been a few months since I’ve done one of those! I didn’t even manage one during my second summer in NZ!

Post run, I savoured my morning coffee on the patio where the warmth of the sun upon my face was most un-February-esque but oh so welcome.

As I surveyed the results of Saturday’s efforts in my garden, I couldn’t help but consider the importance of making space in our life for a new season to come forth.

By the same token, I was reminded of all the adverts on line at the moment about de cluttering our homes. Apparently this is the latest on trend thing to do. A sign of the times that we have become so rich in stuff (if poor in time) that we have to make a point of stripping back the stuff that otherwise threatens to own us.

Anyway, the current theme appears to be a reminder that we must make space for what is to come by relinquishing what it is no longer in season and thus serving as an obstruction to the new stuff.

I was struck by the way we seem to be mostly willing to accept and invest in these processes when it comes to our houses or gardens, even calling these clear outs ‘therapeutic’.

Yet when it comes to the ever so slightly more important business of dealing with ourselves, we don’t seem so keen. We don’t appear to make the connection between the need to deal with our old stuff and to grieve our losses that we can make space for the new growth and life attempting to come through.

Perhaps it is not so easy or satisfying to expend our energy on that which is invisible. Yet to invest in sorting through all the old experiences and corresponding thoughts and feelings is to promote growth and healing that releases new emotional energy for that which is to come.

We cannot really ignore all the old dead stuff in our gardens or the stuff bulging out from our wardrobes or cupboards because we can’t avoid seeing it.

How much easier it feels to bury, cover and deny the internal stuff that equally demands our attention.

Are our hearts and souls not even more important than our houses and gardens?

The winter sun may have disappeared for now but the call to tend to our internal decluttering remains, as we await the real arrival of the next season.