My life as a spring morning
I can’t help it. I am delirious. The yard is freshly mowed, the temperatures are perfect, the air clean and fresh, the sky blue with those small, puffy white clouds, and I get to have my hands in the dirt. The warm, rich, black dirt that we made from leaves and yard clippings, with the help of Roscoe, our intrepid herd of red worms imported to the compost bin for the job. Everywhere I look, it is beautiful. Plus, there is a bird song that I don’t recognize breezing up from the woods, so I have my binoculars close by, along with my tool basket. I just don’t see how it gets better than this.
This is the time of year I love my gardens best. It is all potential — before the gold rose chafers overwhelm the iris beds and the japanese beetles devour the berry patch and the slugs make mush out of the daylilies. Any unplucked weeds are imperceptibly tiny, and the tomato hornworms aren’t even eggs yet. The fresh mulch still has its warm cedar smell, and new annual flower seedlings are beginning to poke up in the flower beds (thanks Jan :)). The baby chickadees are peeping in the bird box at the fence along our little apple orchard, and the young swallows have already fledged and are chattering along behind mommy as they swoop and soar, snatching bugs from the air. And I will pick a big bowl of spinach for supper tonight. The vegetables, too, are all full of potential, neat and tidy and sprouting green rows in their new beds. Oh how loud can I write I LOVE THIS!
And I marvel, how is it that I get to spend the morning in my garden on a perfectly glorious Friday in June…
I imagine part of my delirium comes from deeply knowing it is such a gift. Part of the delirium is gratitude; worshipful receiving. I have this joy today, but keenly remember that it wasn’t always so, and there may well come a day when it will not be again. I carry the hardship of facial palsy every day, and the memories of affliction and sorrow not too many years ago, and the scars of childhood wounds in my soul. But these are now all in the light, where Jesus touches, as peonies open in the sunshine. I am conscious of those I know and love who bear much worse, and weep aloud with cries of ‘O Lord, where is the gift for them?’ But in the moment, my moment, I receive this gift with open arms, lifted heavenward like the perfect iris blooming, turning a face to the Creator, and the tears aren’t of grief, but an Ode to Joy.
Surely Heaven has gardens. Lots of them – dirt, bugs and all. We know Eden did, so maybe it’s an important part of being human. I know my heart sings and worships best in a garden, with the intimacy of miracles all around.
“On my word,
a single May
is too heady for my blood.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, The 9th Elegy
White iris – praise uplifting
Momma phoebe flying over the hillside garden
Veggies coming
carie's garden 