Share your wonder
When I went out for a walk this afternoon, one of the natives commonly used in street plantings, a dietes (wood iris), was out. I hadn’t noticed that it had been planted in this area of the walkway around the water reserve, but once I saw the flower, I saw a few other plants (not yet in flower) scattered around too. It is a pretty flower, but it holds so much meaning for me.
I was very close to my paternal grandmother, Pearl. She passed away just over two years ago now, and just shy of her 101st birthday. If you have been following me a while, you will know how special I thought she was.
As she started to make her way to the final clearing in her woods, she was not at all mobile, was in a tub chair, but never for long, and usually her bed. I visited the aged care home that she lived her final 5 years in nearly every day, and was grieving her loss throughout those final months with her, knowing what was coming. If I got to the home in the afternoon after work and she was in a tub chair, and the weather was not inclement, I would wheel her outside for a little while, into the lovely gardens. She had always been a keen gardener, and of course being born in 1918 in rural Australia, spent a lot more time working with and living off the land that I can even imagine. But what happened with those little outside adventures always filled my heart with so much joy.
She became so deeply observant of flowers, particularly. There were a lot of dietes in the home’s gardens, they are tough and easy to care for, and in full sun flower prolifically. I would make her little posies of what I could find out in flower, or what might be of interest, and there was always a wood iris flower in the middle. She loved those dietes the most. We would spend our whole time together slowly going over the intricate details of the petals the reproductive organs, the stems. She would tell me the colours she saw (she had incredible eyesight right to the end), marvel at tiny stripes on glittery petals. We would sometimes pull one apart and see what we could find in the burgeoning ovaries. Tiny would-be seeds destined to make more dietes. I would surreptitiously take photos of her holding the flowers - I always had such fascination with her weathered hands, all the stories they told in the landscape and lines.
Though this makes my eyes well up with tears describing now, they are happy tears, happy moments of complete presence with my Nan in her final days, and I am so deeply honoured to have spent them with her. So now, when I see dietes, I see my Nan’s nearly 101 year old hands holding them with such reverence, such awe and wonder.
Dear one, I tell you this to remind you to share your wonder. Share the awe and curiosity and absolute amazement at what you find in the natural world with someone you love, because you will make beautiful memories of shared wonder and perfect presence and I can’t think of anything more wonderful.
