“The simple rose, at each moment of its slow blossoming, is as open as it can be. The same is true of our lives.” – Mark Nepo

” I imagine there are people who have experienced “becoming” in one great flash of epiphany and insight. Although there is something compelling about such a possibility, I’m pretty sure that my own journey is bound to be much more like a path of the rose, opening as much as I can each day. When I ponder a rose or a tree or any growing plant in the natural world, it does not appear to me that these living things get impatient with their own unfolding. A rose does not consider itself lagging or lacking at any single moment of its blossoming. It doesn’t feel that it has let itself or anyone down by stretching only as far as possible in one day. I have never sat down and asked a flower directly, but it seems to me that a rose doesn’t view its time of budding as inferior or less than when it is wide open and blooming. I don’t perceive that it is anything but content to rest when the winter snows are deep.

Any gardener knows that things in the natural world grow according to their own internal clock. We can help nurture the plants by pulling weeds, picking off bugs and watering a bit when the rains don’t come. But we can’t pull on the leaves or tender shoots to make them grow faster, in fact such rough handling would surely tear or harm the plant.

The wisdom of the rose reminds me to see myself as whole at every stage journey. I can nurture the tender shoots of my one soul, but have the insight to know that I am resting, growing or stretching as far as possible in one day. I am all that I have been, all that I will become, and I am right where I need to be.” – Carrie Newcomer- June 4, 2023

— opening reading chosen and read by Nancy L.

“Today on my walk I saw only three magnolia blossoms in all of Magnolia Allee.  I noted as I went along the absence of spring’s flamboyant coloring—camellias, azaleas, iris now adding only texture and their own green to blend with all the other greens of lowcountry.  I know hydrangea and wildflowers were blooming elsewhere in the garden, but in the grey of this morning, the greens spoke.  We are here!  Don’t miss what sustains through the seasons, this hidden beauty of the everyday.“

— Photos and reflection by Amy Webb, May 18, 2024

“A rose does not consider itself lagging or lacking at any single moment of its blossoming.” I would even expand upon this to include withering, dying and returning to the earth to plant its seeds and nurture the soil for the next plant or tree. I was drawn to observe the magnolia in its stages of life- each beautiful, necessary and magnificent in its unfolding!

— Photos and reflection by Nancy L.