Gardening

It was a beautiful spring day today.  We had a chance to get out to do yard work.  I spent a short time alone working on the front gardens which have become my little project for the past couple summers.  Last year in the last couple weeks before Loukah was born I went crazy, revamping and transplanting...splitting perennials and trading other plants with neighbours.  In the fall Trystan helped me put in about 200 bulbs.  I have no idea what most of them were or where we put them.  I have no idea if I planted them correctly or when I should expect them to bloom - but we had fun working together in the garden and we are enjoying the daily process of checking for blooms. 

Gardening is not something the comes naturally to me.  It's fair to say I'm a brown thumb.  But when I plunge my hands into the dirt I feel connected to something great and I get excited about what I'm doing.  When I realise that my little plants are growing and blooming - I feel a sense of satisfaction that cannot be mimicked in other things.  The cycle of the seasons fascinates and amazes me - and I think anyone who refuses to call it miraculous is perhaps sitting on the doorstep of cynicism.  My grandmother always said nature was her church and I understand what she meant.  Plants wither, they brown and dissolve into the earth - yet suddenly, with the spring come the green blooms of new life....what is that if not miraculous!  Life!  How can you not honour life on a spiritual level???  I'm not talking about church (that's a deeply personal matter I will never touch in these pages) but spiritually - things you feel with your soul...LIFE!!

I don't know much about gardening.  But I know that when I'm leaning down, coaxing little lives to sprout from the brown earth - I feel closer to nature, closer to my sister and mother, and most precious of all, I sense my grandmothers presence in a profound way.  As this little ritual with Trystan and Loukah evolves I hope I can instill the same sense of love, wonder and respect for nature in all it's complicated simplicity.  I hope that one day my grandchildren will dig in the dirt and feel my presence too.  That would be miraculous to me :D

G'Night