Blossoming Again - #Mindful52

Click to see me in a little more detail(close up!).April 11

With the latest #mindful52 prompt in mind, and still very much thinking about the dreams prompt from last week's Worthiness Wednesday, I thought I'd share these spring photographs today and reflect a little on blossoming.

The photograph above was taken on Wednesday evening, as this little fella was singing away with all his heart. We could hear him inside though all our windows were shut. I particularly I love this shot, because you can see his little yellow beak open wide as he sings his song. If you click on the picture you can see this a little bit more clearly.

I have rather neglected #mindful52 over the past few weeks, due to the things that have been happening in my life, and that familiar feeling of being rather stuck. So when I read this prompt about blossoming and emerging, and also the one from Kat about being worthy of dreams, both made me shudder with horror and retreat straight back into that dark place.

Mindful52 - Week 15 prompt: 

This week I encourage you to look at your life while holding the intention of emerging. Where are you holding back? Where are you trying too hard? Where does blossoming need to occur for you? What are you afraid of? It’s often fear – especially of the unknown – that keeps us stuck. Create space in your yoga practice. Blossom and emerge on the mat. Notice the stuck, stagnant areas within and allow the breath to create the opening.

Blossom in the park April 2011

 It's spring out there at last, and there is such beauty all around me, but lately I have not seemed to be able to sustain any feeling of hope. Yes I get up and get dressed everyday, I set myself tasks for the day, I know I have to carry on with daily life, I know I have to continue to make plans and schemes for the future, I do truly appreciate the many gifts that there are in my life. Still somehow I seem to have allowed myself to fall back and the real joy I had found or had worked for, seems to have been lost.

I've been talking to myself quite sternly about this of course, I don't want to stay in this pit of self pity anymore, but although I have good days, the bad days are still very stark.

So looking at these prompts I felt in all honesty that "blossoming" and "dreams" were words from long ago that I had forgotten the meaning of.

Then on Tuesday this week, I read Heather's follow up post  to her blossoming prompt, entitled Forsythia:

I love how nature reminds us to blossom in our own time, without rushing a thing. This forsythia bush in our backyard blooms bright yellow each spring without fail, and grows like mad throughout the summer – all in perfect harmony and rhythm with the universe. What can we learn from this?

We have a Forsythia in our garden just beginning to flower again. Sitting at our table by the window that looks out onto the garden, I did some journalling about the light bulb moment I had when I read Heather's words. Maybe I am blossoming again. Tuesday is also when I attend Yoga (having always wanted to start Yoga and never really having committed fully, I am now on my third session); so off I went, my heart brimful with the wonder of nature. When I reflect back on my week, Tuesday was a fabulous day, so a big thank you to Heather.

 Forsythias are popular early spring deciduous flowering shrubs in gardens and parks. They are spring flowering shrubs, with yellow flowers. They are grown and prized for being tough, reliable garden plants.

Plant as a single specimen in an out-of-the-way place where it can spread and bloom into a golden mass then blend into the background for the rest of the season. 

deciduous means falling off at maturity or tending to fall off and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe. In a more specific sense deciduous means the dropping of a part that is no longer needed, or falling away after its purpose is finished. In plants it is the result of natural processes. Deciduous has a similar meaning when referring to animal parts such as deciduous antlers in deer or deciduous teeth, also known as baby teeth, in some mammals (including human children).

In the park. April 2011

It was a particularly hard winter, some serious pruning took place and is ongoing; my roots were dangerously close to being damaged at times but I am a well established specimen planted in good soil . There may now be a little blossoming once again, as I emerge from my overwintering, and I begin to listen to and to distinguish my own song again. I am blossoming in self-trust. I am rediscovering what it is to dream. My dreams are worthy of holding close to my heart.

"Now winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what, if anything, has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age – events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel, gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on." - Mary Oliver