I went into the garden this morning and began to putter seriously. Climate change has made it so it is hard to know when it’s safe to do what I’ve done for decades. Here in the south, in the past few years we’ve had startling changes like snow in March or, as this year, seriously cool temperatures until nearly the start of April. At 67, and having been a lifelong gardener –I did it with my Ma from the time I could walk— my body tells me when it’s time to go play in the dirt. I say it lightly, but I’ve learned over the years that dealing with the earth is a necessity for me. But, climate change is seriously messing with my gardening circadian rhythms, so legislators need to get it together.

At any rate, I finally went out to play after a long, cold, weird winter. As always, the first thing is surveying what’s gone on in my months of absence. The next is to clean out a few pots I can throw some color into. I’ve gotten to the place where I sort of creep up to the tasks rather than taking it all on head first, because I don’t want it to seem to overwhelming. I finally had to tell myself I wasn’t a 20 year old gardening huge spaces like I used to be more than willing to do.

One of the reasons I love gardening is because, like quilting, it is a metaphor for life. How could it not be? How can you see your one season black-eyed Susan vine give off seedlings that stubbornly last for years and not learn the lesson that just because you see something you want doesn’t mean you should get it without knowing the consequences before you do? Or looking at a forlorn neglected, totally overwhelming mess of a garden that reflects the heartbreak that caused withdrawal from something you cared so much about and have the cause of that heartbreak work tirelessly to bring it back to life, and not learn about, among other things, forgiveness and resilience? Or watching a tiny pot of eucalyptus you thought would make a nice addition to your herb garden, grow to a 50-foot tree and not learn something about all sorts of things?

So, my gardening time is not just about the flowers. It’s about life. The flowers and veggies are just the cherry on top.

So, I was cleaning the heavily mildewed north-facing side of my favorite wind chime this morning, when I thought about a conversation I’d had with my oldest daughter the night before as we chatted during my granddaughter’s 12th birthday 6-girl sleepover (!!). My daughter had come into a pretty substantial inheritance a couple of months before, and while, as a divorced mother of 2 (with no child support) elementary school teacher, she is extremely fiscally conservative, she’d (thank heaven) kept enough of the money available to do some things she had never been able to afford before. One of them was to buy this wonderful cooking pan. I loved the pan and it would get good use by her.

But, when she told me about the pan, something seemed off. Then she told me that when she’d put the $40 pan she’d have forever in the Walmart cart, her daughter had essentially told her, with all the wisdom learned in her 12 years of witnessing her mother’s fiscal conservatism (i.e., “Put that back. We can’t afford it.”), that she was losing her mind buying something so expensive.

So, my strong, independent, kick-ass daughter was second-guessing her choice to spend $40 she could now well afford, on a cooking pot she would keep the rest of her life.

Because a 12-year-old questioned it.

I thought about that while cleaning the wind chime because in some ways, I totally got it. I am not a conspicuous consumer. I have driven a Volkswagen Beetle for the past 18 years (and love it! Tho I hate its Hitler origins). I don’t spend loads of money on clothes, jewelry, high priced food (organic excepted!), shoes, or many other things that it astonishes me that people do. How can someone pay $800 for a pair of shoes? Or even $200 for a pair of sneakers?! But, last night I ordered over $200 worth of flower plants from a favorite gardening catalog.

And the wind chime I was cleaning as I thought about this? $300.

Yep. A $300 wind chime. I didn’t even know they existed. Until, while browsing in my favorite (regrettably no longer in existence) gardening store destination (actually, an outdoor gardening selling place rather an actual store. It was awesome!) I followed my ears to the most glorious sound I can ever remember hearing (outside the sound of my 3 daughters’ first cry after birth). It was absolutely celestial. Deep. Clear. Unbelievably mellifluous. Amazing. Then I saw the price tag. I was so sure it was a mistake until I asked the owner. Nope. It was correct.

How could it be?! It was a wind chime!? Talk about sticker shock.

I hated to leave it, but I did. There was no way I could spend that kind of money on such a thing.

But, I couldn’t get the sound out of my mind. So celestial. So rich. So sonorous. So transcendent.

I went back to see if the sound was as wonderful as I remembered. It was. Perhaps even moreso. Parting with it was like leaving a dear friend. The sound was a sound that elevated me. That reminded that I was a heavenly being having an earthly experience. It reminded me of my spiritual connection to the Earth and to humanity. It was more than a wind chime. It was a spiritual reminder to my higher self.

I bought it.

Not only did I buy it, but as I realized as I cleaned it this morning, I have never had one second of regret about buying it. Not one. And after all these years, it never ceases to do what it did that first day, remind me of my higher self.

Life is too short to deprive ourselves of the things we legitimately believe fill a genuine desire. I’m not talking about buying trying to be better than the Joneses type stuff you can’t afford in order to make yourself seem important in the eyes of others. I’m talking about things you genuinely want that you think are helpful in your journey in some way. Even if it’s to help you more efficiently or happily perform the tedious daily task of cooking a nutritious meal for your kids every day or a reminder of connecting yourself to your higher purpose.

This is your unique journey. No one can dictate what you need for it or how to do it. There’s no telling what may help you with that journey along the way. No one else may ever understand how the me they know who would never buy an expensive car could spend $300 on a wind chime. But then, they don’t have to. They didn’t pay for it, I’m not asking to borrow grocery money from them because of what they consider a frivolous purchase, so what’s the issue? It’s my journey and no one can dictate what I need to help with that journey.

And so it is with you.