I have a flower garden plot right outside the door that I consider to be my Zen garden. It is fairly small, in relation to the rest of the flower and vegetable gardens at least, and it contains one of my favorite flowers - the Moss Rose. Every year for the last four or five years I have had Moss Roses here and, despite being listed as annuals, they reseed themselves vigorously with their tiny grain-of-sand sized seeds. What this means, however, is that I have to be exceptionally aware of what these tiny little flowers look like when they sprout. So this area outside my door starts out each year as a bare patch of dirt and slowly weeds start to sprout up and then, with all the same faith as the proverbial mustard seed, so do the Moss Roses. 
While the rest of the flower garden is growing to knee high and blossoming with flowers, this plot of dirt takes its time and looks mostly like an abandoned lot of patchwork weeds. If I were to take on trying to make this section completely weed free and beautiful all in one day, it would be overwhelming in every sense of the word.....this is how it became my Zen garden.
It happens often that I am completely overwhelmed by life. Too much to do, too big of a mess to clean up, too many problems in the world, ....., not enough time, energy or enthusiasm to take them all on. I will despondently stand on the top step of my porch contemplating the indirect proportion of stuff to be done to my level of energy and slowly sink down on the steps in apathy....which puts me in very close proximity to my bare, weedy plot of moss roses.
These tiny seeds have been washed out, grown over, walked upon by several errant children....and yet they are here. Slowly growing, changing, and blossoming despite their challenges. And so, while stewing in my wretched mind set, my fingers slowly start to pull at each little weed that surrounds them and I carve out a small square of weed free area that then extends into the next weed free area and, one listless moment after another, I slowly clear an area that allows the moss roses to become the gorgeous flowers they are.
What often happens while weeding these minuscule little seedlings is that I stop thinking of all that is overwhelming and wrong in the world and suddenly my mind starts to focus on nothing at all - no worries, no plans, no things to be done, no problems, only the slow, methodical, careful weeding from between the tiny seedlings. I start to see my life in relation to this weedy patch of ground and realize that it takes slow, methodical, careful work to eventually come to a place in one's life that is free of weeds and open to the air and sunshine. It can't happen in a day. And then slowly it refocuses in on the other things that I actually can do that need doing and, eventually, I pull myself up off my knees and, feeling better, meander to the next garden area most in need of attention.
Pulled from my despondency by a tiny plant that will evolve into a beautiful flower. My bare, weed patch of a life takes on a little of the energy of these hardy little plants that survive the brutal winter, take root amidst a washout of sand and dry dirt and challenge the weeds around them to gain light and air enough to grow, but it never happens all in one day and the enlightenment that they provide doesn't last indefinitely....it all takes time, and year after year it is the same. A quiet circle of growing, weeding, flowering, seeding out, dying off, surviving the winter, and growing again....and I am part of that circle for these little seeds, and they are part of mine. Would I survive without them? Yes. Would they survive without me? Yes. But together we are better - I pull up the weeds that surround them and they pull me up when my darkest thoughts surround me - and together we grow.
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