A slow unfurl

It was a very clever question....

As a seasonal artist you quickly learn the need to be patient. I will spot a bud beginning to flower or a fern beginning to unfurl and I know what is coming. There is a sense of security in that within a world that is witnessing much change. Mostly, these changes are not helpful to the natural world and in some instances these changes are destroying parts of our world. But, for the moment, my ferns continue to unfurl very slowly and my Irises take their time to reveal their beauty.

The deep connection I have with the natural world teaches me the value in slowly unfurling. The human race is in far too much of a hurry. Where are we trying to get to in such a hurry and why is that important? Bit by bit I am removing myself from a world driven by a human sense of time choosing to inhabit a world dictated by natural time. I am more aware of changing light as the day begins to fade than I am of the time on the clock. When I moved to a small Scottish island from a busy town one of the first things I did was take my watch off. Of course, in more recent times the mobile phone has replaced watches for many of us. I now leave mine in a different room, near enough to hear it ring if one of my children needs me but far away to leave it alone.

This simple change has meant that I can inhabit my own time in my studio working alongside nature and sharing a restful sense of time. As I take a little peek into what my retirement might look like I am mindful of my growing sense of natural time. This is all a million miles away from the time when I was running a flower farm, wedding business, retail space and home schooling my four children. Just writing that sentence is exhuasting but I was much younger then and energy levels were considerably higher. The pivotal aspect back then was home schooling as that taught the whole family a different sense of time. I am thinking lockdown did the same for many of us?

I have been slow to unfurl post lockdown and I think there is part of me that will now not fully unfurl and join the other ferns marching across the bottom of my garden. I am hooked on this stage of my life and a job that affords me the luxury of working within my own schedule. Not everyone has those luxuries and I am acutely aware of that. Seasonal shifts can be tiny and take some time to be fully realised. The Iris is not feeling the pressure of all around being in full bloom. The unfurled fern is happy for the others to take up the march. Neither of them have ever heard of lockdown.

Over 20 years ago a wise woman once asked me a critical question - ‘if you have a whole day in front of you and you could choose how you spend it, what would you do?’ It is such a clever question but I am not going to tell you why. Ask yourself the same question and see what happens.

Meantime, you will find me somewhere between the Iris and the Fern waiting patiently.