Six Messages from a Wild Garden: Sweetness

Message #6: Sweetness

A tree dahlia at Evergreen, looking like a sweet, startled star.

When I spend time in my garden on the south coast of Western Australia, it tells me about six things that start with the letter ‘S’.

Seeds. Seasons. Sunshine. Soil. Suffering. Sweetness.

Today I want to share my garden’s message about SWEETNESS.

Sweetness

Sweetness isn’t just found in a dessert bowl. Sweetness is everywhere.

I just stepped outside and although it’s mid-winter, I’m enveloped with sweetness. Late roses are blooming. The lake reflects trees and sky. Late autumn leaves tumble down. Banjo and Quacking frogs call. Reed seeds float by in the wind. The sun warms my back.

We must be still and silent if we want to notice a thousand and one sweet things that we usually ignore.

• The smell of rain.

• The first ripe strawberry to pass your lips.

• A bulb finally flowering.

• A baby parrot’s clear call.

• Fuzz on the back of a velvety leaf.

The word sweet can be traced back to the Old English word swete, which meant: ‘pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings’. 

So, sweetness isn’t just experienced through our five physical senses, like when we catch the perfume of sweet peas in the air. It can be experienced by our mind (thoughts) and our feelings (emotions).

We can have a sweet thought, or express sweetness by our presence.

Sweetness can be a whole-body sensation.

There is a sweetness in you. This sweetness is beyond your thoughts, wider than your experience, and deeper than your pain.

Sweetness is carried on the wind, slides down a moonbeam, glimmers from a star, shines out of you. 

As Hamlet said to his friend Horatio in Act 1, Scene 5:

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And I could add that there is more sweetness in Heaven and Earth, than we have ever dreamed, thought or noticed.

With love, Marlane