A Power Much Higher Than I

Do I know what life is about? No.
Am I in charge of my own life?  No.
Am I grateful for this life that I have? Yes.

So, why am I grateful?  Because this brief, bewildering life is a beautiful wonder to behold.  If you don't believe me, just look at the life going on in my back garden today.

Hart's Tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium) unravelling its fresh fronds.  This belongs to a group of plants that worked out a way of living on this planet long before human beings arrived on the scene - so who is smarter?  I don't know, but we are both still here.

There was a time when human beings spent a fortune speculating on Tulip bulbs just as they do property and shares today.  Curiously, the multi-coloured the blooms they prized most highly are created by a virus.

Maybe they would not have rated something like Tulipa fosteriana 'Purissima'.

Or Tulipa fosteriana 'Orange Emperor'.

And I am guessing someone once looked at this basic Tulipa sylvestris and wondered: How can I improve on that?

Right now I am seeing beauty everywhere I look in this little back garden of mine.

From the beginnings of fresh growth on the Yew, Taxus baccata . . .

. . . to the red glow of the stems (petioles?) of the new leaves on Viburnum x bodnatense, a highly scented winter flowering hybrid shrub originating from Bodnant Garden in North Wales.

Red stems of the sedge, Uncinia Rubra - a native of New Zealand it belongs to a group of plants from the sub-continent Gondwana that existed over 180 million years ago.  As such, they are found in New Zealand, Australia and South America which at that time were part of the same land mass.

After Gondwana, and so found in South America but not the Antipodes (oops, a bit Brito-centric there) is Fuchsia magellanica.  I cut this back hard and now in what might have seemed like dead wood to some there are the reddish buds of new foliage breaking forth.











A red glow that has been developed by the human influence is that belonging to Euphorbia griffithii 'Dixter':

A Chinese native, Paeonia lactiflora (Peony Rose) has formed its bud and getting ready to bloom:

As is the Spanish Poppy, Papaver rupifragum which has hitched its way here with both house moves since 2006:

London Pride (Saxifraga x urbium) has its flower bud forming deep within its rosette and that hairy stem will raise it up into the sun shortly with flowers of a delicate complexity.

Some plants (called weeds by some sad people) are determined to grow against the odds.  This Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) has pushed its way through a smothering carpet of Osteospermum foliage to produce this magnificent bloom.

Visually less spectacular but no less remarkable is this battered Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) - torn from being stepped on and treated like a weed between slabs, it is determined to bloom and has produced a flower on a shorter stem as a result.  It is a strategy that has worked because I have fallen in love with its resilience and decided to let stay at home in this particular crack.





These last few days has seen the so-called Winter Windflower coming into bloom:

Anemone blanda 'White Splendour'

Anemone blanda 'Blue Shades'

And speaking of windflowers, I could imagine this exquisite daffodil almost flying from its stem into spring sky.

This is Narcissus triandrus 'Thalia'.

And this little gem is Narcissus jonquil 'Sailboat'.













Of course, some plants have already moved on from budding and flowering and are beginning to think about setting seed for the next generation:

Scilla siberica

Caught in a spider web, the spores still attached to a portion of fern leaf and we are back near where we started - I think.

So, to whom am I grateful for all this life?

I don't know.  I call he, she, it and/or them a power greater than myself .  I don't claim to understand that power but it has helped me save my own life and I see it in everything I look at in my back garden today.

For short, I call he, she, it and/or them God but I never found that God in any Church or Sunday School.  After all this colour I shall leave you with the man in black: Johnny Cash.  I think he maybe found his higher power in the same way I found mine.