Category Archives: seasons

Thanksgiving for Seasons

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 This display at our local garden center is created to be a “living wall”.  As I enjoyed all the color and texture growing on this one spot, framed by the thoughts of a living wall, I was thankful for the lessons seasonal loss and gain teach me.  True, there are no daffodils or spring green tree buds here, but oh, the richness and variation of autumn color.  In the autumn of my life I am thankful for colorful change. Just as surely, winter will come.  Then, too, I can draw strength from the one in whom we are rooted,

“There is a winter in all of our lives,
a chill and darkness that makes us yearn
for days that have gone
or put our hope in days yet to be.

Father God, you created seasons for a purpose.
Spring is full of expectation
buds breaking
frosts abating and an awakening
of creation before the first days of summer.

Now the sun gives warmth
and comfort to our lives
reviving aching joints
bringing colour, new life
and crops to fruiting.

Autumn gives nature space
to lean back, relax and enjoy the fruits of its labour
mellow colours in sky and landscape
as the earth prepares to rest.

Then winter, cold and bare as nature takes stock
rests, unwinds, sleeps until the time is right.

An endless cycle
and yet a perfect model.
We need a winter in our lives.
A time of rest, a time to stand still.
A time to reacquaint ourselves
with the faith in which we live and breathe.
It is only then that we can draw strength
from the one in whom we are rooted,
take time to grow and rise through the darkness
into the warm glow of your springtime,
to blossom and flourish,
bring colour and vitality into this world,
your garden.

Thank you Father
for the seasons of our lives”

written by John Birch, Methodist Lay Minister in Wales

Leaf and Shadow

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  Our first cool spell is blowing in here, and we will pull out our sweaters and go outside to enjoy crisp, cool mornings this week.  To be sure, we are beginning to see a few leaves loose their green and turn yellow.  Our crepe myrtles and Bradford pears will give us some fall colors in their foliage. But this time of year I miss the piney woods of Northeast Texas where I grew up. Seasonal change was more pronounced there, and I loved watching for the woods to glow with Sweet Gum and the scarlet leaves of Sumac.  However, I believe in enjoying what I have, and this single leaf  brought me joy.  Masses of even New England’s wonders and color palette are beautiful, but they are there and then.  I am here and now, and so is my leaf and its lovely shadow.

Is Happiness Green?

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“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!

Eden to Eternity

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  Included in my writings for Lent, these words are taken from two hymns written for the same hymn tune, Morning Has Broken and Child in a Manger. The original melody was noted by Alexander Fraser from a wandering Scottish Highland minstrel. Mary McDonald (1789 – 1872) wrote the words of the nativity hymn. Later, Eleanor Farjeon wrote words for the same tune which were originally printed in 1931 but not copyrighted until 1957 under its correct title, A Morning Song for the First Day of Spring.

 Until today, I had never considered the two sets of words together and when I did as I listened to the haunting tune, I felt a connection between the thoughts of the two women. My heart filled as I considered the continuity and the depth of holding God’s work of creation, nativity, death, and resurrection in my own thoughts. First Eden, then Bethlehem, then on to Jerusalem.

 Morning has broken,blackbird spoken,

First morning, first bird.

Praise singing and springing.

Sweet rainfall

Heavenly sunlight

First dew, first grass

Praise garden and path.

My sunlight.

My morning.

Newborn Eden displayed

Praise Creator and created.

Then, Manger Child.

Outcast and stranger,

Transgression swaddled,

Wrapped in my wrong.

Child once most holy,

Living that lowly,

Now filled with glory

In salvation story.

Prophesied Wonder,

Royalty revealed.

Word defined… Atoned,

I am His own.

Mary Ann Parker April 12, 2011

Seed Time

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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

~Mary Ann Parker, March 29, 2011

Sundial and Delphinium

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Hours and days mark Lent’s  journey.

Wilderness days, nights of shadows –

Shaping time, shaping me.

Gathering grace, forging fortitude.

Wilderness days,  nights of shadows –

Grow green, moss.  Bloom, bluest Delphinium.

Gathering grace, forging fortitude

Kaleidoscope of green and blue.

Grow green moss!  Bloom bluest, Delphinium!

Shaping time, shaping me.

Kaleidoscope of green and blue,

Hours and days mark Lent’s journey.

~Mary Ann Parker

In the form of French Pantoum, this is one of a set of Lenten poems.

Cracked Voice

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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.

Share My Song

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On this last day of February, warm days and cool nights call us out to the garden. We have been pruning the results of last month’s hard freezes, tilling soil, and clearing paths as we ready for planting. A pair of cardinals watches us as carefully as we watch them. They may have already chosen a nest and we don’t want to threaten them into moving. In the tangle of barren branches their quick flashes of color make us run for a camera. Bold and bright red with his black mask, the male is darting from porch to tree. We see his mate less often, but sometimes glimpse them together. Non-migratory birds, most cardinals live within a mile of where they were born. They are song birds and the male uses its call to attract a mate, but unlike most northern songbirds, the female also sings. She will often sing from the nest, perhaps a call to her mate. Cardinal pairs have song phrases that they share. As we listen carefully, on these first sunny days of late winter, we hear the song. It sounds like ‘cheer, cheer, cheer’.
Gray days and gray thoughts feel so different according to where I am standing. If I wrap my shawl of worry around my shoulders and stay inside I may never see my red feathered friend or hear his song. Only as I go out, look up, and open my heart am I able to find the song and share it.

“Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” ~ Emily Dickinson

Message in Moss

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Walking in my winter garden, I see some things I might not notice when the drab palette comes back to green and growth. This mossy stone ball reminds me of an organic global map and prompts me on this Valentine’s morning to love all my neighbors, including those beyond my daily shores. I am called to widen my view, open my mind. I pray to know more, in order to better love.

“Love follows knowledge.” ~ Thomas Aquinas