Small Pleasures

I have been out of a town for a few days at a conference, and out of action in the garden (celebrating my birthday instead).
 The garden challenge has crashed and burned.

I am not worried. In fact I had already begun to think that the notion of a "challenge" is entirely at odds with the reason I go into the garden.
At my most demotivated, the concept of a challenge still has the power to crack a bit of life into me, but what I notice as I get older is that the effects of this kind of artificial jolt into action are increasingly shortlived.
It doesn't take me long to become querulous and rebellious, and to start making excuses, and soon whatever the challenge was becomes something to be resisted. Totally counterproductive.

The garden still calls to me though, and it is because of the small pleasures.

I look up while lugging a heavy load of weeds and there's a cobweb sparkling,

and I clear away some fallen leaves and find two baby ferns, a maiden hair and another which I transplanted years ago from our old place and thought had died. There they are strong, green and flourishing untended.

So as January 2012 ends I say bye bye to the machismo of the garden challenge and hello to serendipity.