Cosmos flowers, blooming everywhere in my yard, are the inspiration for this week’s mindfulness focus – dependability.
Cosmos are annual flowers that blooms in mid to late summer. They grow easily and are at home in a wide range of soils.(1) They self seed, meaning they will plant themselves again for the next spring. Their beautiful feathery leaves make them almost immune to hail. They are wonderful companion plants for the vegetable garden as they attract bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Cosmos also attract a host of beneficial insects that feed on the insects that devour our plants. This includes: lacewings, trichogramma wasps , pirate bugs, damsel bugs, and parasitic mini wasps – all good guys.(1)
But the most dependable thing about Cosmos is that they are super drought tolerant. Before moving to Denver I had no idea they were so resilient. There is a little band of cosmos that have planted themselves in an area that I don’t water at the front of my yard. They are small but flowering – no small task in the intense Denver sun.
The funny thing about dependability
The funny thing about dependability is that sometimes we can slide into taken things for granted. People, events, plants are dependable – until they are not. Any gardener knows that varieties of plants we have planted for many years, can have an unproductive and not dependable year. We base dependability on past experience, but things are always in flux. The preparations in Houston last week around Hurricane Harvey were based on the past experience that certain neighborhoods never flooded – this was a mistake.
Certainly we can make reasonable guesses of the things that might remain dependable for us and be grateful for them. But we can also cultivate an awareness that dependability is something of an illusion. Each moment is new.
For information on my weekly mindfulness focus word experiment click here.
Footnotes
(1) Growing Cosmos from the Farmer’s Almanac
(2) Cosmos and Beneficial Insects – from Permaculturenews.org
