What’s the duck in your flower bed?

We live in a city, in a row of houses near a busy road with 10 steps leading up to the front door. Next to the stairs is a raised flower bed about knee height, full of bushes and plants that mostly just fade into the background of daily life.

Sitting in my office overlooking the road, window open in the recent heat, last week I heard a huge commotion outside the front door and a lot of quacking!

Out from the bushes and tumbling down the steps emerged a mother duck followed by eight tiny fluffy ducklings.

Eight!!

Apparently, while we had been getting on with our lives, mother nature had decided that our flower bed, only inches away from our front door, was a perfectly reasonable place to nest and raise a family!

What followed was both ridiculous and strangely moving. The ducklings tumbled their way down the stairs towards the main road while a neighbour and I hovered nearby trying not to interfere too much, yet also prevent catastrophe unfolding. Eventually, they were escorted safely to the local marina where they hopped into the water and swam away as though this had all been perfectly normal.

And I haven’t really stopped thinking about it since.

At times with delight because it was so unexpected and joyful, yet also with disbelief that something so significant was happening literally on our doorstep and we didn’t realise it.

Now there’s a metaphor to reflect on.

And I’ve been doing just that. Sitting with the things quietly under our noses that we simply do not notice. Considering the parts of ourselves living right on our own doorstep but hidden beneath the surface noise of everyday life.

Perhaps the feelings we have not made space for or the intuition we keep overriding. The tiredness we explain away or the change quietly waiting in the background.

Apparently it takes around a month for the nest to be built, the eggs to be laid and incubated and the ducklings to hatch. That duck had been there for some time, building, protecting and preparing, yet we had absolutely no idea.

It makes me wonder how often this happens in life and work?

How often do we only notice something important once it starts making enough noise to disrupt us?

And yet would it have been better if we had noticed sooner? We weren’t needed to rescue or fix the situation. Mama duck seemed to have everything she needed. Perhaps sometimes the role is simply to create enough space and safety for what is emerging to make its way “towards the water”.

I still don’t fully know what the duck in my flower bed represents and maybe that’s the point for now.

But it has left me with some questions I’ll continue to sit with (who knew ducks could write?! Badum-tish…) and you may find them useful too:

• What have I been stepping past, overlooking or explaining away?

• What might change if I slowed down enough to properly notice what is already there?

• What might quietly be emerging beneath the surface of everyday life?