It's so simple

The garden in spring has a way of calming. Dirt, water, sunshine and the promise of new green shoots seem to work some miraculous thing in the soul and even out the highs and lows of mood swings for me. It's cathartic in the garden.

So, after arriving home from a thought provoking service at church, I headed outside to do some weeding and watering, and just find a head space that was more about the simplicity of working hard than anything else. So I thought, until the little girl next door stuck her adorable little nose through the fence and said, "Hi, friend". And I had no other choice but drop my tools, take off my gloves, sit down by the fence and talk to her.

"It's my birthday," she said. "I'm 5." "Wow," I said. "That's really getting old." And I sat and she stood at the fence and we talked and talked for quite some time. Then her sister joined us, and my daughter Claire joined us, and all of us kept talking about simple little things like favourite colours, and favourite animals, and birthday presents, and what we did the other night when the power went off and things like that. It was a very sweet time… four girls talking through the fence about simple things.

Don't you get tired sometimes of thinking about not-so-simple things, about the serious nature of life, and decisions, and things to work on and figure out, and what's for dinner and do your kids have clean socks? I do.

Don't you wish that you could laugh more and play more and be light and simple, like a little girl in a purple dress who dances on the fresh mown lawn in the sunshine?