Zen in the Garden

Pirouette – A California Poppy bloom. ©Tracy J Thomas, 2014. All rights reserved.

I have always been enamored with macro photography. Especially the up close and personal photos of insects with magnified detail that we don’t often see with our eyes alone. It’s the type of photography that requires great patience along with great breath control, a steady tripod, and the ability to twist and contort your body into positions that place you eye to eye with the most minute of subjects. It is also a great practice for slowing down and becoming more aware of the hidden things in one’s universe. Your whole garden becomes narrowed down to a little dewdrop on a tiny flower petal or a minute mushroom wedged between two blades of grass. For that moment, nothing else seems as important as capturing that scene with your camera.

Honey Bee on Salvia – ©Tracy J Thomas, 2014. All rights reserved.

Because we tend to run through life at breakneck speed for most of our adult years, a macro photograph can elicit endless “ooooohhhh’s” and “ahhhhhhhh’s.” We often fail to recognize the minute details and small things that make up the world around us. There is a very magical quality to macro photos that tends to put a smile on our faces. Maybe it’s because they remind us for a moment of our childhood days when everything was a fairytale. The times we spent all day crawling around on our bellies in the grass in order to explore the microcosm with which we felt so connected. Maybe it’s because as adults those images remind us to slow down a bit and realize it shouldn’t always be so much about the larger world around us. It’s a sudden realization that it might just be about the 12 square inches of earth that we are standing on in this very moment.

The Spider and the Fly – ©Tracy J Thomas, 2014. All rights reserved.

I have begun to spend a few hours of every day out in the garden in search of those tiny treasures. It has helped me to empty my mind of all the clutter and to refocus my energies on what is truly important in life. These have become my Zen moments. My way to connect with nature while living in the midst of the city. It calms me, inspires me, and opens my eyes once again to all the wonder I have at times failed to remember.

Japanese Maple Seeds – ©Tracy J Thomas, 2014. All rights reserved.

I feel like a kid again. The one who ran freely through the fields with a jar and a butterfly net. The one who spent hours having a stare down with a Wolf Spider waiting for the babies to crawl off of her back.

The Poppy and the Beetle – ©Tracy J Thomas, 2014. All rights reserved

This practice of wandering the garden in search of tiny-legged creatures or pausing in awe of a flower petal as it is kissed by a ray of light, has become the ultimate of therapies for me. It is a meditation of sorts that reminds me that life is as beautiful and as awe-inspiring as we allow it to be.

The Unfolding – ©Tracy J Thomas, 2014. All rights reserved.