A mountain is a mountain

This is a weed. It's four feet tall and I just noticed it! OK, it's a sunflower (I think). But I didn't plant it. I wasn't expecting it. And it was four feet tall before I ever noticed it.

I was stunned. I come out to the garden every day and look at everything. I thought I looked at everything. I wish I could describe the feeling that came over me when I realized it was there. And there are two more just like it within a couple of feet! Incredible! Impossible!

There are so many apt metaphors in this, I don't even know where to start.

There's something about awareness.

There's something about only seeing what we want to see, or what we expect to see.

But that would be all about me!

It's also a pretty amazing thing in and of itself. The stalk is almost an inch thick and covered with fuzz. The leaves are big and hardy, broad and bold, brazenly hogging up all the sun. It reaches decidedly skyward, with abandon, arms outstretched, piercing the clouds like a dare. It was designed to spring up out of nowhere, to shock and awe.

A yoga teacher once advised me: don't be mad at the oak tree because it's not a rose bush. You can prune it and feed it, yell at it, coax it, make promises to it... it is still going to be an oak tree.

I'm going to keep this weed.