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Cameras - they record memories, they capture people as you once knew them, they bring the past to the present. As I began taking pictures of my garden this year - I bought an electronic camera and put away my film: now I am prodigous with snapping photos that don't cost anything - I just download them onto my computer and put them on the screensaver.
I began to see things in my garden I had never seen before. Some I had not even noticed when I took the photos. I began to take more and more photos, especially of the littlest things in the garden and it opened up a whole new world that was under my nose.
The bugs, the tiny parts of each flower, the pollen, the dew, they are present all the time just ignored. Change in the garden is incredibly fast. The sun coming up changes the colors over minutes. The dew comes and goes. Many flowers are only out for a day or two and then wither. New ones come along.
Sometimes, I walk into the garden looking, smelling and then I notice a weed. I pull it and see another. There is another one hidden there. There are thousands. I pull and pull and pull. Then I look around me and notice how neat and clean everything is. I feel content, perhaps a little tired, but satisfied, but when I go back inside, all I can recall are the shapes and sizes of the weeds, I can't remember the flowers in the garden.
The camera has forced (helped) me to see all the beauty in the garden and ignore to some degree the overwhelming work ethic, to control the garden, the plants and the flowers. It is not too bad a feeling to see the wonderful things all within a hundred feet of where I sleep every night.
Can you believe that bee can fly with all that pollen? Would you like to meet the spider with the cross on his back if you were a fly? Are there enough patterns and colors in all those flowers? If your mouth doesn't water from those tomatos, you have never picked a fresh one at the end of a work day. How about eating a raspberry crisp with morning dew on it?
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