The Roses Were Going Wild and So Was My Mind

“Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.” Richard Brinsley Sheridan (18th century Irish playwright, poet and politician)

On Monday I had been rushing around all morning, thinking about too many things at once, carrying that familiar feeling of needing to do everything immediately, pick up all the Lego blocks, an email I should’ve sent yesterday, paperwork piling up, prep lunch soon…

Then when I went out to hang up the washing, I noticed the roses in the garden had completely bloomed. Wildly. Quietly. Without asking for permission.

So I put away the washing basket, slipped on my green gardening gloves, picked up my secateurs and went outside to pluck some.

After moving a slab of foam from the flower bed, I climbed onto another slab and reached for the closest branch to carefully cut one rose.

Although, if I’m being honest, I spent a lot of the time nervously looking around for wasps and irrationally worrying I’d somehow swallow a bee like Lord Bridgerton.

Not exactly the calm cottagecore moment I had imagined for myself.

But after plucking just enough roses for my vase, I noticed how still my racing mind had become.

Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the bright yellow of the roses. Maybe it was the smell of summer slowly arriving.

Sometimes I forget that nature doesn’t rush, even when everything in modern life tells us to.

Maybe thriving doesn’t always look organised.

Maybe it can look a little wild and chaotic too.