blossoms through concrete & the ever urgent dandelion

Once, 'swinging' through Paris on a coach, amidst the reveries of youthful travelling, my eyes danced blearily across a citadel of stone, not a squeak of green to be seen. A twist of revelation reminded me that, without this concrete artery of motorway, not only would there be no speed of travel to include all I imagined I needed to see in this particular life on earth, but so much that I would never see. Yet somewhere I sensed a weeping beneath this insistence of city.


Glancing out again, in my mind's eye the land as it once had been, unburdened by human interface, suddenly revealed itself to me; lush green, stippled with tree and streams in idle play within the vagaries of nature. How effortless, the interplay, the song of 'whatever'- a visual melody. Nothing was grey. Nowadays, choose to see this a vision for our future- and our muddle and mess of 'now' a quirky 'in-between'.


I like to think that the echo of my heart is eco, but lately, for need of shelter, I have been homed in exchange for cleaning, while my sister works mainly gardening. How ironic that, faced with a deadline for clearing the garden of a house poised for letting by 'a certain date', she is instructed to use weedkiller, against her deepest nature. Here, deadlines=necessity to kill to meet personal agenda.


Fresh from watching 'the world according to Monsanto', the bottles of Roundup arranged in a row in the store seem, for all the world, like an army of profiteering vigilantes;their 'uniform' adorned with advertising, tweaked to convince the undiscerning that they are of positive service to the world. I want to scrawl on the label ' In the world according to Monsanto 'Bio-degradable = bollox :)


Soon after, I am employed to water the barren plot in which a few choice, pruned bushes have been planted. I scan the pale straw remnants of what once grew, poking between the pavings. Here and there, a flush of rebellious green shouts from the saturated soil, defiantly screaming it's inconvenient beauty. I pull up the dead grass, quietly apologising, ask forgiveness and invite it to grow resplendent once again. Then I remember that nature needs no invitation. She is an inveterate warrior of diverse heart, relentlessly reclaiming her own against invasion.


And who, in this square suburban garden, flaunts it's flag of green first, with one metaphorical finger up to the myopic human being? : the ever urgent dandelion. Its spiky leaves may have been briefly claimed but, nudging beneath the soil, I see its roots securely laced in a mesh beneath the whole terrain. I motion to my sister, how ludicrous it is that human beings, contaminated by motive of pure profit, poison their own medicine, available free, just steps away from where they sleep. Exhausted at day's end with a day's work 'well-done', they crack open the wine and pull their bodies in to a frame where the liver-cleansing dandelion could be known and loved for the friend it is.


Blossoms pushing through concrete: oh, how this speaks of the lives of so many human beings who struggle to thrive within the constraints of their urban co-creations. Witnessing this perseverance, I notice also how we create the very resistance that births our pain, yet the blossom persists in its urge to become what it is here for. How would it be to simply surrender, dump the 'inner concrete' and flourish free?


'Ah-hah' I hear my inner 'sufferants' smugly declare. 'Adversity is the mother of strength and endurance- and only through it can we ever successfully become. To this my heart replies:

'Rather the colourful and sweet gentle bliss of a diverse meadow, free of all fear of variety, rampant with contrast and acceptance, than the militant asphyxiations of fixed notion in which we only barely breathe.


So- what shall I plant? The need to order, control and cloister? Or giddy, abundant possibility? As the gardener, I choose- and sow do each of us.