dazzling jewels

"Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When formerly, I have analysed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square feet of impermeable and unfathomable bog--a natural sink in one corner of it.  That was the jewel which dazzled me."                                                                              Thoreau's Walking

My natural sink holds many things. It is not perfect. It is not large. And sometimes it really stinks, but I am growing to like it and am strangely attracted to it even when I think someone else's sink surely must be better. 

I am learning that this bog does not need owning.  That is does not need tidying.  It is totally free and completely natural.  

Its wildness is the source of my creative life.  Its colours and its unpredictability force me to pay closer attention. 

My natural sink, my bog, my swamp holds many things:

An old tethered blanket helps me sort a very small mint crop.

A child's raw wonder and excitement for ripe berries.

Long summer shadows that linger on the wall.

And Magical Mystery fabric, full of bold colour and design.

Small and simple things.  

I still fill with envy for what I don't have...that farm, that large garden, the hens, the herbs...but then I realize, perhaps I would choose that wild messy place in the corner of it after all because there is where I have already found some dazzling jewels.