“We only see what we look at. ”

— John Berger

“It’s not what you look at that matters: it’s what you see.”

— Henry David Thoreau

I came out to my porch to write this morning. The weather has gotten cool enough to make writing outside pleasant again, and I like to be out here to sit quietly with my thoughts. Though as soon as I sat down I was reminded how wonderfully loud nature is. Late summer sounds of field crickets and crows in the distance. Katydids and squirrels.

I look out to the back garden and there is a monarch on my hot pink zinnia. This is exactly the moment I dreamed of as I pored through seed catalogues in the winter. When the world was grey and frozen and cold. When the garden was perfect in my imagination. The butterfly is making a tour of the zinnias—orange, pink, yellow, and then makes its way to the butterfly bush, spikes of purple, in my neighbor’s yard.

Monday, I had replaced my old weed trimmer and finally cut the month old grass in my back yard. Work travel and Covid had interfered with my gardening tasks, so the back yard had turned into an overgrown meadow. I took half a day to tidy up the yard and the lawn, but I left the beds looking unkempt and boisterous. They reminded me of my overgrown perennial beds at my house fifteen years ago. Those beds were also really overgrown as I was traveling a lot for work and wasn’t able to keep up. One late summer I had a new stove delivered to the house and the one of the delivery guys stopped on his way out and looked around the yard and asked, “So, is this the look you are going for?” Which is pretty much what I asked myself on Monday as I looked around.

So, right now my garden may not be ‘the look I am going for’ but thanks to some self-seeded sunflowers and zinnias creating a cheerful jumble of color and food there – it is exactly the look that the monarch is going for.

“It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.” The delivery guy sees a mess, and the monarch sees nourishment. And this is where the monarch reminded me of the true purpose of the garden. Gardens, in all of their forms, are invitations to nourishment. You can’t make a monarch come into your yard. It is a delicate joy that arrives if you create conditions that make it likely. You have to create the conditions that invites it, that encourages it, that sustains it. Your garden needs to have nourishment.

I have been thinking a lot about nourishment lately because the people I am working with are so very tired. And the act of recovery—from Covid, or from other stressors seems to be more than just ‘reducing stress.’ It seems to require an infusion of energy—an infusion of nourishment. But when I ask them what is nourishing for them --I get blank stares. It’s almost like they’ve forgotten. It’s been so long since anyone has felt nourished.

Which has me wonder whether we humans are very good at seeing what is nourishing in our lives. Can we see our zinnias? Can we tolerate the messes so what needs to grow can get enough time and space? Can we create an environment in our lives that is an invitation to nourishment? Can we create a garden—a place where we can grow-- that has enough mess, jumble, and color, that our inner butterfly has a place to land—has a place to get nourishment from?

Nourishment happens a little at a time. The monarch spends moments at each flower and then heads off to find nourishment elsewhere. We aren’t good at seeing nourishment, and we forget how small the increments need to be in order absorb nourishment. A song that brings us energy. A conversation with a neighbor that brightens our day. The monarch on our zinnia. Look for nourishment. See it in the moments that it happens. And take it in.