Why I'm watching the flowers

“Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted.” ~ Simone Weil

I’m waiting for the peonies like I do every spring.

I check them daily and wonder at the varying rates of growth: of the two on the side of the front porch, one is significantly taller than the other; of the two outside my bedroom window, one has not even emerged from the ground, which worries me. 

Things take the time they take, as the saying goes. But the peonies take their time take their time take their time and then boom—a profusion of blooms blooming, for less time than it takes to wait for them. I want to enjoy every stage of their process.

On a walk last week I spotted the first trilliums, an event I always document with photos. How many springs, how many walks? All those years I chose to run instead, and all the trilliums unappreciated. There is no time to stop for pictures when you are running. No time but the stopwatch, nothing to watch for but the anticipated stop.

I do miss the cadence of a run. I miss the sound of my footfall and the way it marked my breath: IN two three four OUT two three four.  Walking doesn’t give the same rhythm.

But time to notice—that’s the benefit of walking. Time to notice, and less wear on my joints and dictation of my schedule. The rhythm of walking is time to be human; the rhythm of walking is time to change.

Spring, by Claude Monet

The forest is changing. 

Before the trilliums it was the tiny pink flowers popping up on the manzanita, the purple Snow Queen materializing from the forest floor. The brown and green woods are changed with lightly colored, delicately small flowers, tiny changes in small increments that don’t last very long.

The Douglas Firs and Hemlocks and scattered Madrone trees stay through the changes, watching and unperturbed.

But one stretch of my walk still resembles a dropped box of toothpicks, or a battle scene with much carnage. Was it three years ago all those trees blew over in that big storm? Six years? There must be some law of forestry that makes those trees unmerchantable and that stretch of wood not worth cleaning up. I suppose it’s natural, leaving all the blown trees lying for wildlife and vegetation and eventual soil nutrients. It looks chaotic but that’s how things really are.

I’m waiting for something to change, watching for it like peonies in spring. 

And I’m living in change, like the forest floor—waiting and watching and very often missing the tiny increments real change comes in: every tenth of a mile is a change in distance, every ounce a change in weight, every second a click forward forward forward. 

I’m waiting for something to change but so much already has and I often don’t really know the last of something, only the firsts, and only if I’m paying attention. 

“Prayer consists of attention,” says Simone Weil. 

This week the trilliums—a triple trinity of leaf, sepal, and petal—are already turning from white to pink, like the dogwoods do. They change fast. 

When I first noticed them they were a glowing, gauzy apparition in the black forest, a voice crying in the wilderness. Now they are quiet and subdued, dying back into the ground to hopefully continue, hopefully multiply, hopefully poke through the darkness next spring.

Some things require lots of attention to notice, and if I look away I think I’ll miss something. But other things, other changes I wait for, just seem to take so much longer if I’m constantly watching and waiting. A watched pot and all that.

I guess that’s why I’m watching flowers.