My creative flow and corporate structure are often at odds, but both my whimsical and my analytical sides can agree on one thing: a love of signs and synchronicities.
Lately, nature has been coming in with some particularly poignant ones.
It always has really, but I’ve recently been taking some more time for intentional presence, and that has helped me notice the magic happening just outside my window.
It’s also been teaching me a thing or two about doing and not doing; trust and letting go; forcing an outcome and allowing an unfolding.
This deeper, more magical appreciation of nature and how I’ve begun to hear it had been bubbling up to the surface over the last few weeks, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to express it… Until my kids asked me to read Outside In (written by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Cindy Derby) for the first time in a while.
This simple children’s book had me just a little tearful.
I think it touched some childhood wonder, quieted for years by the demands of daily life but now breathing fresh air.
It’s her turn to speak!
Our Japanese maples
We’ve planted several small trees around our home, mostly Japanese maples.
I’ve always found it a little scary to plant a tree in your yard. Joyful, but scary.
I like a plan. I like to know exactly what is going to go down, when, and how. (What is that they say? I can totally go with the flow, as long as I’ve scheduled the flow, I know where the flow is happening, I have read the menu of the flow in advance…)
Which makes watercolour an odd medium of choice. Maybe that’s the arena in which my creative soul can fully explore some duality — part that wants to exert control and the part that wants to let go.
These trees come with a little tag indicating their typical full-grown width and height, their sun and water requirements, and so on. But the reality is no matter how carefully you plan and place, each tree will take on a life of its own, responding differently depending on the nuances of the exact spot it’s planted (and its neighbours).
We have an Osakazuki that was planted in a theoretically ideal location, but he really seemed to be struggling in his first year or so with us. When we anxiously asked an arborist about it, he told us it would be fine — it was just finding its feet in its new environment, and that takes time. Patience is key. Sure enough, he has really come out of his shell and is now a gorgeous, prominent friend in our yard.
It’s okay to feel uncomfortable when stepping into a new life — it takes time to anchor your roots. This feels relevant almost exactly a year after stepping out of my corporate life and rooting into a more creative one.
We also planted a butterfly maple in an obscure little spot in our yard that we didn’t think much of — suitable, but not remarkably so. We expected her to struggle like our friend Osakazuki, yet much to our surprise, she is thriving and never skipped a beat.
You don’t always need perfect conditions to start. Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself by blooming where you’re planted.
It’s not just whether or not the tree will be happy where we plant it that makes me nervous, though. It’s also the permanence of that decision. Generally speaking, once a tree is planted, it stays there, regardless of how it decides to grow.
Meaning for me, there’s an element of letting go and trusting the flow involved in tree planting.
Another prominent tree that we planted about four years ago is a Coral Bark Japanese maple. It was just a little guy when we planted it outside my office window. Boy has he flourished — and he actually keeps my writing space feeling nice and cozy, creating a natural barrier between this space and the road.
In a sense, this Coral Bark doesn’t really need to speak — he holds my creative space. He’s a resting point for my eyes when I need a break from what I’m working on, and he’s where my gaze lands when sitting in gratitude.
Together, they all belong. They’ve withstood heat domes and freezing temperatures, high winds and thunderstorms, never ceasing to add beauty and a little magic to our home.
The local residents
Dragonflies have always captured my attention since I was little, and I was always thrilled to see one. They’d become a bit of a spiritual symbol for me, so it often felt significant when I saw one.
We had been visiting this place one day, before we’d actually moved in, and to my surprise and delight, the backyard was for a moment full of swooping, swirling dragonflies. I’d never seen so many dragonflies all at once in my life, and I don’t think I’ve seen quite so many since — it must have been mating season.
You’re home.
Hummingbirds have also always captured my attention, but growing up I’d rarely ever see one. Yet here, they pop up frequently! Our neighbours have hummingbird feeders up year-round, so I figured that’s why I saw them so often.
But not long after we moved in, an arborist came to take care of our large corkscrew willow tree. I can still hear the sort of delight in his voice when, from way up in the tree, I heard, “oh hello little one, I almost didn’t see you there!”
He’d found a hummingbird nest! So that was why I saw them so often. I haven’t been able to spot the nest itself, but I’m delighted to see the hummingbirds regularly. Often showing up at just the right times, of course.
Remember to find the joy in the smallest moments.
And then there’s Farrah, who inspired this post.
What happens when you’re not even looking
Not long ago, I had started slowing down my creative output in favour of watercolour painting and working on a quiet project behind the scenes. I just felt the call to stillness. It was like a creative reset, a chance to tune inward, a lesson in not doing, just being.
But it was challenging.
My mind wants to produce — that’s my safety zone. I was reaching for the creator identity, which has a certain cadence to it. But I knew I needed to intentionally not do, and this required a certain letting go — the kind where you just need to plant the trees and hope for the best. It required me to build a sense of being at home with myself — like a heart full of dragonflies. And it required presence and delight in the little things, as this hummingbird reminded me, sitting there in the willow while I folded laundry.
I had to fight the feeling that perhaps I was sabotaging my creative aspirations by pulling back.
The last stretch of my time away was highlighted by our family staycation — a wonderful and welcome distraction from the battle of self-doubt. Although we were still home, I really didn’t go into my writing space, and when we were outside, we were often bustling back and forth between the house and the car as we headed out for events and day trips.
I had rarely ever felt so present in my life. We had the best time.
But what I didn’t notice until I finally sat down to write again was something new in the coral bark outside my window. My husband noticed first, truthfully — he thought it was a small wasp’s nest, but when he gave it a gentle poke, a bird flew out!
Somehow, in the week that I had not been writing, while I was out having fun with my family, this tiny finch built an entire nest, right outside my window.
It’s amazing what can happen when you’re not even looking.
This felt like an affirmation. You can pause. You can live your life. And you never know what’s growing in the background.
Now I have a beautiful little writing buddy encouraging me along my new creative path. When I open my window, I can hear her sweet little song. My husband came up with the name Farrah Finch.
(This whole time I’ve assumed this is a female house finch sitting on the nest, but apparently male and female finches take shifts — and also apparently, I’m not entirely sure if she’s a finch at all!)
The resilience of nature
When we discovered the little hummingbird’s nest up in the willow tree, I had to wonder — how on earth do they make it through stormy weather?
We don’t have a ton of bad weather, but in my part of Greater Vancouver, it is wet, and the wind can get pretty speedy off the farmlands. The willow’s limbs sway wildly in the wind.
Yet nature persists, and the hummingbirds are still there.
Recently, I was sitting here at my writing desk after my kids went to bed. It was pretty dark and visibility on the nest in the coral bark was low. It was a little stormy, but I hadn’t thought much of it.
That was until a flash of lightning filled my window, immediately followed by thunder that made me jump back from my desk; it was so loud. I wondered at how my kids managed to sleep through that while unplugging my computer. Then I stared out my window.
How on earth would this little finch nest make it through a thunderstorm?
As much as I wanted to do something, I had to remind myself that nature has made it this far on its own. The hummingbird nest is even tinier, and yet it’s made it all of these years. So I went to bed, worried but hopeful.
The next morning, she was still there, sitting in the nest, singing her sweet little song. The sun was bright. It was like nothing had happened.
It made me think of how tightly we can hang onto the stuff of the past, and how it can make us fearful of the future. But I don’t think Farrah is shaking in her nest, worried about how she’ll make it through the next thunderstorm.
I think she’s enjoying the morning sunshine, probably looking forward to her next meal.
Every day is a new day… if we can let it.
It also makes me think about how we are so very fortunate to have a roof over our heads — for many of us creatives, our fear isn’t landing on the need for nourishment and shelter; it’s on our need to express ourselves authentically and freely.
Terrifying, sometimes. Isn’t that odd?
But if Farrah can weather the storm and wake up to sing the next day, I can certainly step fully into my creativity.
And I hope you’ll join me for it.
Thanks for reading!
Not too long ago, I was absolutely enthralled by whimsy, and after a lot of blogging about work-life balance and bullet journaling, I did something way outside my comfort zone — I wrote a whimsical 5-part email series.
Return to Your Creative Self (A Whimsical Email Journey)
This series walks you through four inner gardens that help you reclaim your energy, reconnect with yourself, make space to create, and to ease into a nurturing creative practice, which are the four pillars that I write my blog around.
There’s also a magical book that holds your dreams.
If you’re intrigued, please feel free to give it a try and let me know how it goes! Being my first time creating something like that, I’m genuinely curious about how it lands.
If you decide to try it out, you’ll also be added to my Kit email list, for which I write a monthly letter with a different flavour from my Substack. Unsubscribe anytime!
This post originally published on Substack.
