How to Identify and Release Emotional Baggage for a Happier Life. Reflections from the garden.
I’m sitting in my garden. I’ve been here a little while. The sun has been setting the entire time, it was at about ten o clock earlier, it’s now disappeared behind the hedge. Well fence really, but I’ve let the ivy cover it and it makes a magnificent backdrop. Especially in September when the bees smother it so completely it looks like the ivy is alive.
The bright colours of the flowers are fading to grey. The garden is looking fantastic for this time of year. The challenge has always been to extend the garden from spring colour to summer spectacular. The garden is dominated by a magnificent copper beach, that does cause a fair amount of shade. This year we have begun, finally, to achieve that target. Beautiful hollyhocks, pink in this part of the garden, the purple of the Italian leather plant and a clematis. I hadn’t expected it to do so well this year, a lot of it had died back to a single main stem, but in the last few weeks it has sprung to life with a vigour many of us could only ever hope to emulate. And the star jasmin, well it has never been so full of flower as this year. Absolutely spectacular, it’s turned from green leaf to flowers, beautifully white, as white as freshly cleaned teeth. There’s a salvia, hotlips, only just visible from here, however, that’s beautiful too.
I should mention, the hollyhocks are in exactly the wrong place, but as with foxgloves, they both like to grow where they plant themselves rather than grow where they were initially installed. In this case right on the edge of the beds. They will need staking soon, although the honeysuckle is doing a pretty job of that for me…
I’m sitting on the pergola in our newly purchased seating, comfy on new cushions, drinking a lovely cup of tea and basking in the enveloping aura of jasmin scent. My wife has just joined me and she also commented on the beautifully intoxicating scent the pergola is currently bathed in.
We can just about hear the water bubbling in the pond at the far end of the garden and I am considering putting on the water feature at the end of the pergola, it’s considerably louder, but I am reluctant to drown out the song of blackbird and the cooing of collared dove.
A quintessential English summer evening.
A designed heaven.
A perfect spot to mull over some difficult choices and make the inevitable difficult decisions.
I am also coming to the end of am amazing book. It’s called ‘meant for more’ written by Mia Hewitt.
And this is why I’ve been painting this lovely scene, because although its fantastic, well, don’t know about simply fantastic, it’s bloody amazing. However, it won’t make you feel amazing by itself, you can only find that if you’re happy on the inside and that is your responsibility.
One of the main points Mia makes is, and I quote, ‘we cannot transform an inside problem with an outside solution’. Thus, we are responsible for ourselves. How we think and feel. Especially if we are carrying our ‘problems’ about with us.
That’s leads me to the difficulty I have with the many experts that are on social media. That they have overcome some horrendous problems, difficulties, conditions, addictions is laudable. But to then live a full life you have to let these past traumas go. Put them in the past, become comfortable with them even. However, these survivors keep banging on about the problem, often with the same message, slightly adjusted, over and over again.
So, scrolling past another batch, I realise there is nothing I can do about them, I have to let them go too.
I’m also at peace knowing I’ve made those difficult decisions that have been on my mind and I don’t have to dwell on them anymore either, just implement them.
I put my phone down and immerse myself once again in the sensory overload that I can have created especially for this body that chooses to be at peace on the inside and calm, and finish off my book and smile.
It’s been a lovely day.
Simon Pollard Garden designer and Countryman. July 23
For more enlightening posts for mental welfare please visit https://simonpollard.uk/
