Eighteen Simple Steps to Appreciating Your Garden in the Spring

1. Find a time when you’re not fully awake and no one else is around.
2. Make some tea or coffee in your favorite cup.
3. Put on appropriate clothing.
4. Wander out into your garden (or yard or nearby park).
5. Walk naturally and without purpose, as if you did this all the time.
6. Imagine that you are at home here – that the garden may be greeting you even as you greet the garden.
7. Notice what attracts your attention and move towards it.
8. Get close and look closely.
9. Touch it gently as if you were shaking a tiny hand.
10. Look to see what is next to it and what it might be doing.
11. Continue wandering and noticing without purpose.
12. Gently see what you haven’t seen before.
13. After some time, find a place to sit and rest for just a few minutes.
14. Receive whatever comes – through you eyes and ears, through your nose and skin, through you mind and imagination.
15. Consider that you may be here simply to appreciate.
16. After some time, take your cup and go inside.
17. Don’t try to talk about what you experienced in the garden.
18. Let whatever happened or didn’t happen be enough.