When do we need to leave well alone?

I have ignored my garden for months now and looked sadly at my precious plants fading and collapsing under snow, frost and heavy rain.

My Clematis that I nurtured was a tangle of dry leaves slumped against the fence. My tree lilies were 3 bare sticks. My flowerbed was worse !!! Upturned pots and spilled soil lay amongst the remains of the lupins.

I knew that I would have to go out and clear away the debris and start all over again.

How wrong was I? The tree lilies tips are peeping out of the soil - clearly seen when I cleared away yucky leaves. The lupins are green and fresh and rising up to meet the new spring air. The clematis have sprouted fresh healthy green leaves and the peony roses are shooting up.

Nature is wonderful and never fails. No matter what is thrown at it in terms of rain or whatever, those buds still appear in spring. Ok not everything survives but that is natural. That's the way of nature - its a cycle.

How many times have we interfered and messed things up instead of letting life happen?

We coat our skins with anti-wrinkle creams, colour our hair, dose ourselves with multivitamins in a useless attempt to hold back the years. If we stop pushing against what is obvious and may be inevitable, life is easier. There I was, all geared up to dig up and throw away and causing myself upset. Instead of looking out at my garden in the middle of winter and be grateful for it, I was reprimanding myself. Forces far greater than I are silently working away, accepting and going with the flow.

Can we do this in life? Are there times when it is better to stop and trust that we are being looked after? Is this called intuition - that knowing intelligence that tells us to stop or go?

So today I am letting go of the need to control everything. There are things I can control.

Trust and believe that you are being looked after. There is an intelligence greater than me and even though my ego says otherwise, I don't know everything and I do not need to fix everything. Somethings look after themselves and are better without me sticking my nose in.