A Message from Nature - The Story of a Heart

Something happened today to trigger a memory, I wanted to share it here with you. . .

Seven years ago we were living in quite an isolated country cottage surrounded by nature. We had deer and foxes visit our garden and rabbits hopping around on the grass, it was open on one side to a three acre wild flower meadow that led to the bluebell filled woods beyond.

It was while living there that I became attuned to nature. I had never lived so far from a town and all it contained. Here nature was almost palpable in its presence and I grew to love the space, the garden, the animals. The wildness of it all.

It was rented from an old lady, and we had lived there for seven years when the old lady died and out of the blue a letter arrived from solicitors acting on behalf of her family. We had one month to move out as her family wanted to sell up. I was in shock, it should have been expected but it wasn't.

So the packing and goodbyes began. . . I said goodbye to the big old stone workshop attached to the house - it had been my art studio, full of creativity and inspiration. I emptied the outbuildings that our once feral cat had given birth in the year before, to the kittens that taught me that I could love cats as well as dogs! I walked into the meadow to the spot we had buried our old dog Harvey just a few months before. . .

I strolled around the garden. That magical place where I had learned so much from trial and error and from just loving it and allowing it to bloom. Where I had sensed the energy of the place, where things had happened that changed my relationship with nature forever. Full to the brim with emotion and goodbyes, I went to sit quietly on my usual perch. The huge flat rock/stone that had been here long before we came. It was then that I saw it. . .

A perfect heart made out of moss, growing there on that big lump of granite.

And through the burning tears that immediately leapt to my eyes, I smiled, because I understood the message from this house, this space, from nature itself. . . It loved me back!

The photo that I took of that special message, sits among the pictures in the header to this blog, its story untold. Until today when I decided to share the story here with you. . .

"Ultimately magic finds you, if you let it." - Tony Wheeler