Wild Carrot: Inside Out, Downside Up

 Like my grandparents and great-grandparents, the wild carrot emigrated from Britain and Europe to New Zealand and found a place to grow and flourish.

Many people call the wild carrot - and other immigrants, of both plant and human kinds - weeds. Some people pull them out, some spray them with pesticide, some just curse them. When I came to our land, it had no garden; it was just a bare paddock. I discovered the beauty of weeds, and picked them to put in vases. I came to love the wild carrot in particular.

It is a beautiful flower, and even when it is picked, pressed flat, 

and turned upside down it remains beautiful. In fact, I think its wild underside is even more beautiful than the side it shows the world.

I've reached a point in my life when I think it's time to start accepting my underside, to stop worrying about what other people think and say, to live life more from the inside than the outside. And because it's so easy to slip back into the habits of six decades I decided I need something to remind myself that instead of trying to live from the outside in,  from now I want to live from the inside out. I'm turning the downside up. And this is my reminder: