This afternoon I was busy weeding the wildlife habitat bed that I had planted in Bill’s memory the fall after he died. It is a bed along the driveway, an extensive area formerly filled with invasive honeysuckle shrubs and prickly natives, now planted with perennials and shrubs that provide food and shelter for birds, bees, and butterflies. There are shrubs of bottlebrush buckeye, viburnum, Carolina all spice, red bud trees, ferns, hyssop, goldenrod, muly grasses, and many more. This extensive bed has been overgrown with thick grasses and weeds this summer, and I made the mistake in the spring of broadcasting a meadow mixture of seeds into the center of the bed–a mistake because it is almost impossible to separate the grasses and weeds from the wildflowers. I am leaving that central part of the bed un-weeded and focusing on the lower end. I had cleared a large patch of ground when I paused for a moment to catch my breath. Then I saw the sleek gray bird, about the size of a small robin, hopping over the ground that I had cleared. It was digging in the fresh dirt with its beak, looking for insects, I think, and seemed to have no fear of me, though it must have noticed my presence. I slowly moved to my weeding stool and sat down. I sat as still as a statue, as still as a stone. The gnats swirled around my straw hat. I held my breath as the gray bird hopped closer and closer. It came as close as two feet from the spot where I was sitting. I could see its bright black eye, and the subtle markings of its gray feathers, slightly darker on its head. I later identified it as a cat bird. When it moved off, I quietly moved my stool.

What would life be like for us if we could spend some time–each day or each week– as still as stones, as calm as trees, observing the world around us and drinking in its beauty?