Look what can be found

Dried Flower Head 

Even in the deepest point of mid-winter, there are beauties to be found. Here are a few things I noticed on my walk.

Here's a dried flower head. Look at all those sleeping seeds. Waiting, to drop to the place where they might flower. Waiting, for warmth and sunlight. Waiting, just gently swaying in the breeze, letting the world hold them until its time for them to be blown off the stem and carried by the wind to the place where they will germinate. Perhaps to land close by or maybe very far away.

When the time is right, the process begins. The seed doesn't ask permission from the world to germinate. It just nestles in the soil, and absorbs the warmth, the dark, the nutrients in the soil; all those things that nourish it and allow the germination to begin.

Flowering Gorse

And the time for flowering is also not decided, but given. The gorse is already flowering. In the darkest part of the year, there are yellow blossoms everywhere.

Before midwinter draws to a close, I want to rest in the darkness. Allow myself to absorb the darkness, the warmth of the soil.

No forcing the germination. But hoping that when the time is right, something will gently pulse inside. Will push at the sides of the seed husk, and, with the strength born of  long resting in the dark, will start to unfurl.

To slowly grow, up into the light, out of the dark. And bloom into flower, when the time is right.