Of a garden...

…and it’s been enough sunshine, and it’s been enough warmth around here these last few weeks, so that I have been working hard in the garden every day now… all that debris from the pruning and cleaning of these past weeks had been collected and trashed, and again, the yard is bursting with more… more branches and roots; more fragments of yesterdays…

I have removed two more old vines; supports and all, and now the walls where they had stood are finally free of all that ‘accumulation of years’ that was hidden among overwhelming branches.   

The huge blue spruce pine is looking much better now without the lower branches and under it, well hidden underneath much pine needle and a thick mantle of uncontrolled ivy, I made a marvelous discovery… the little dried creek that on a long-ago happy summer day my dear precious mother and I created.  

Ah, I had long forgotten about it, but there it was… still there, just as we had left it many years ago…

What bittersweet special moment it was discovering it.  The very instant my hands touched the first stones, I knew—all memories came rushing back… to that long ago day, to her, to me, to where we stood in life back then and where we now are… tears running down my face as I unearthed and cleaned those stones… such forgotten treasure; a silent prayer reposing on quiet lips. A heavenly promise.  A hopeful heart.  A new and better tomorrow.

What did we talk about while we carried those stones, one by one, onto this little ‘sacred’ space of ours?  And what did we laughed about as we lay stone by stone on the ground?  Because, surely, we must have had laughed...  We always laughed whenever we were together… whether it was working alongside, or walking arm in arm in a cramped mall, or when in the car, or cooking or whatever we were doing… we always laughed.  She would say something funny—whatever it was, and I would immediately let my little heart loose, laughing out loud… joy pouring from our pores… always loving, always close. Oh, I so miss her.  I miss her terribly…

Miracles are happening everywhere.  God is near...

It’s been quite the ordeal pulling out all that awful ivy by hand, and as body, hands and head bend down to the ground pulling, perspiring, and hoping, from the other side of the fence comes the obnoxious barking… new neighbors, other dogs, a new life, a new year, but always that same territorial insistence of the animal, renouncing to share the land…. And thus, all peace gone.  

The other day, while cleaning and removing more branches and debris, I discovered that the earth is already teeming with new life! Beautiful, green heads are already popping out of the ground everywhere.  Tulips! Tulips, that I had planted long ago, always faithful.  Always the first ones each year to return to the garden…

Hope... blessed hope.  I have so many things I want to share; a little story, a wonderful little miracle, of faith and friendship with my Creator... but it will be later.  Soon.  In the meantime, live to believe in Him who strengthens us…

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

(Emily Dickinson)