Right now we have a large dove population in our back yard. I know this because when I walk outside, I often startle a pair or two on the walkways or fence. I love finding their nests. This one is on the top of arches where a climbing antique rose grows. I can stand underneath it, which is where this photo was taken.
Greening in the Rain
Peaceful garden, greening in the rain
Roses blooming, shattering, scattering confetti on the flagstone
Hyacinth thrusting up a sweet purple bouquet
Doves building twig nests in twining vines.
Roses blooming, shattering, scattering confetti?
Shaken by startled darting wings –
Doves, building twig nests in twining vines
Petaled path inviting passage.
Shaken by startled darting wings,
I am stilled as I see their nest,
Petaled path inviting passage
Peaceful garden, greening in the rain.
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Two weeks ago today we were preparing for a return to the hospital for Joe so that he could have the surgery I posted about last week. There have been many surgeries, four of them in the last five months. We are grateful to report the surgeon successfully put new knee replacement parts back in (the third set!) and although Joe has pain and a huge amount of work as his muscles regain strength and healing begins, he is walking, bearing weight on that leg for the first time in a long long time! He is smiling, holding his head higher, talking about going back to work and a trip this Spring. He is thriving.
You may be asking what my seedling photo can possibly have to do with this journey for us. Just this – two weeks ago today, I sowed a package of my favorite heirloom tomato seeds in pots which I set inside my kitchen. When we left on the morning of surgery (3 days), there was not a tiny speck of green anywhere that indicated anything was happening with my seeds. Each morning before I left for the hospital, I misted them, keeping the soil moist but not soggy. On the 5th day, I smiled as I told Joe we had "babies" when I got to his hospital room. Joe came home at the end of the week, and agreed with me that the seedlings were "looking for light" as they stretched their spindly stalks toward the window. The bit of sunlight they got in their spot just wasn't enough. I hooked up a couple of grow lights and this is the result! Now the stems are getting stronger, and if you look closely, you are able to see the secondary leaves just beginning to appear. My Cherokee Purple tomatoes are thriving!
Two weeks can make such a difference. I am thinking I just might have some help harvesting tomatoes this summer.
“When gardeners garden, it is not just plants that grow, but the gardeners themselves”. ~ Ken Druse
Texas Gulf Coast Winters are frequently mild, but so far this year has been strangely so. After the summer’s dreadful prolonged heat and drought, we welcomed Fall and cooler temperatures. After earlier than usual temperature dips into slightly below freezing, we have had only a couple of freeze warnings and unusually warm days which are tricking the garden into thinking Spring. The Peggy Martin roses on our arbor are throwing out new growth and bursting into a riot of color. Undoubtedly we will have some nips when temperatures drop again.
How can I learn and grow from tending this garden?
I will remember that my circumstance is not always what it seems.
I will avoid jumping to conclusions based on unfinished results.
I will practice patience even when I want to demand “now.”
For many years now, I have believed that when I find a feather, it is a reminder to me that little things are important, and that I am kept in the shadow of God’s wing. I have found feathers in the most unusual and unexpected places, when I wasn’t really looking. When my mother was dying, I went out to the car to drive back to sit with her. When I got to the edge of the lawn, I had to step over the median. When I looked down, I found a large black and green duck feather sticking straight up out of the grass. A wisp of a feather floated by and stuck on my windshield on another occasion when I sorely needed the reminder.
I had a little feather that was a wonder to me for years. I don’t remember where I found it or exactly when, although I kept it in a little birthday reminder book that was given to me in 1987, the year we moved to Indonesia. I put it there in the beginning because on that page there is a drawing of that same feather, right down to the size (tiny) and colors and markings (black and white). I was amazed at that. Usually the process is different…you find the object, then obtain or make its resemblance.
The other special thing about that feather was that it lived between the pages of the birthday calendar book where my oldest son’s name is written, January 13, his birthday. And that it was still there, through 2 moves in Jakarta, an international shipping, and the busy household shuffling of my kitchen desk every day. Feathers usually don’t stay. They drift in and blow away. But this little feather stayed between the pages and always caused me to smile when I came upon it. It reminded me of joy in small things, of hope … of lines of poetry and scripture, and that gifts can come when you open your hand and heart, and sometimes, the door. I gave the feather to my son on his birthday last year, telling him I hoped it would serve as a reminder of the same things for him. (This story was posted in the blog last September.)
I still find feathers. And they are still reminders for me of joy and faith…and that I am under the shadow of His wing. A favorite author, Leigh McElroy, likes finding feathers too. She reminds me that God may wink or whisper in the way He reminds me of His presence, and that He delights in delighting me with the littlest of things. The opening scene in a movie loved by many tells a story of a feather found and kept.
“Happiness? The color of it must be spring green, impossible to describe until I see a just-hatched lizard sunning on a stone. That color, the glowing green lizard skin, repeats in every new leaf… The regenerative power of nature explodes in every weed, stalk, branch. Working in the mild sun, I feel the green fuse of my body, too. Surges of energy, kaleidoscopic sunlight through the leaves, the soft breeze that makes me want to say the word “zephyr”—this mindless simplicity can be called happiness.”
—Frances Mayes
What color is my happiness? I could easily say Frances Mayes has said it all, that yes, the color of my happiness is spring green seen in the glowing leaf and lizard, weed and branch. That green does fuel my energy, and I have always loved the dappled sunlight as I stand under swaying branches with leaves transformed into countless shades of green. Indeed, this “mindless simplicity can be called happiness”.
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However, on this Monday, I am soaked in the exhilaration that comes from Eastering. The Alleluias of Sunday morning and joy of my granddaughters as they experienced awe and wonder in all the Easter colors filled my happy cup to the brim. Several years ago, after experiencing a season of sharply declining vision due to a corneal disease, I received cornea transplants, the gift of 2 donor families. Two weeks following the first surgery, as I sat out by our pond, I suddenly realized I could see the cobalt blue of an iris. I was shot through with happiness and gratitude that I could see that flower clearly.
This day, a different way of seeing for me means receiving the gift of seeing through the eyes of my granddaughters as they marveled at golden Day Lilies, orange fish swishing in the pond, and royal purples of the Zinnias and Salvia. The colors of happiness are the same as those of gratitude, I think. Alleluia!
The title for a favorite children’s book, The Trellis and the Seed, provokes thoughts of what emerging parts of life we nurture and support so that new growth and beauty can unfold. I have given Jan Karon’s book about a moonflower seed and a trellis along with a package of moonflower seeds to my granddaughters and other children. It is a story of planting and waiting, of faith and hope, a story of creation and shaping and astonishment, a story of tending a garden. The latticework must be strong as it balances and supports, as seeds take root and new green growth stretches into spaces, bearing fruit and flower, then reseeding for yet more beginnings.
A gardener’s fingers push a hard dry seed into damp earth… patting, putting it to bed.
Covered in a quilt of soil and sprinkled by Spring rain, the seed hears no lullaby.
Awakening and swelling, a wrinkled husk cracks. A living kernel curls and stretches.
Enlarging, changing, pushing aside its grounding.
Covered in a quilt of soil, sprinkled by Spring rain, the seed hears no lullaby.
Quickening to ancient rhythms, birthing stem and leaf.
Enlarging, changing, pushing aside its grounding.
Reaching for light, unfolding, greening.
Quickening to ancient rhythms, birthing stem and leaf
Awakened and swollen, a wrinkled husk cracked, a living kernel unfurled and stretched.
Reached for light, unfolded, greened.
A gardener’s fingers pushed a hard dry seed into damp earth and marveled at its waking
I found a dry gray twig that cracked when I broke it between my fingers.
Without color, without life, only a brittle reminder of green glory past.
An unlovely stick, broken away from its family of branches, useful only in its decay.
Only one of many made by Winter
Without color, without life, only a brittle reminder of green glory past,
Reminder of growth, reminder of beauty, reminder of shade and rest.
Only one of many made by Winter
Rhythmic pointer of season to come, singing a silent song of Spring
Reminder of growth, reminder of beauty, reminder of shade and rest
An unlovely stick, broken away from its family of branches, useful only in its decay?
Rhythmic pointer of season to come, singing a silent song of Spring!
I found a dry gray twig that cracked when I broke it between my fingers.
The tree was there first, and by my own observation, grew slowly by the man-made brick wall. I have been walking by this corner for six years. A year ago, when the first cracks in mortar appeared, I barely noticed. Now, as bricks begin to crumble and fall, I know they never had a chance unless the tree died. The lesson for me is simply put: Growth pushes boundaries. I would rather grow.
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Stones and Feathers 