GREEN ACRES

*this is an archived post from my Talk at the Table blog. I thought it might give some background into my love of things that keep me outdoors. And it reminds me of spring, which it absolutely is not here today.

March has brought unexpected, and often taken granted for, early spring.

Backdoor open to let life promise in.

I bend and squat the gardener me, worm watching girl, taking note of mud drying , cracks and bubbles of hope , green reassurance bursting. Slimy blankets to turn back , cribs of soil to ready and gaze over. Down , I am , peering under, prodding , knees firm on hallowed soil. I go to my soul here, reflection, renewal, rebirth, reform, reaffirm, reliance . A vessel with bowed head in the sun, filling from grounded feet, crackling and sparking in resurrection. Amen.

Thanks mom, for your lawn chair lessons and balcony observance, encouraging and shooing that I might find always and seek out, life in the urban settings, parking lots, back alleys, parks, and sandboxes. Thanks for the opportunity to find virtue in tending family vegetable gardens , seasons of seemingly endless toil to nourish growing tangles of dinner table limbs. A grandmother's garden with green pea pearls. Too dark porch caves with bean seed dreams. Grass cushions for headstands and falls from dizzy spinning. Pick up stick snarled forsythia sun spots, and pussy willow sprigs of hard and smooth and velvety caresses on my heart.
Squished against car door , lapping at the rushing air , drives to countryside, by bluffs, across and over and to and fro. Long queasy, Export A hazed, whizzing and imprinting of evergreens , fall glory, waterfalls , springs, ditches and golden lakes of grain. Thank you for the criss crossing of Canadian shields and plains and foothills and farms. For Sunday sermons from quivering poplar clergy. The endless branches of dirt road enlightenment from trails and boardwalks going in to darkened shadow filled breath holding impasses to burst in splendid awe and relief into light ray pencils writing Faith and Believe in trillium and moss strokes.

Many seasons later, married in spring aspirations, I danced with my beloved into trusted sanctity. We claimed our homesteads outside first, with gardens and flower beds , finding harmony in flowing seed sprinkled and bulb filled lines of earthiness. Bringing forth children, crawling babies beckoned to cool greenness off strewn blanket edges, toddlers pinching buds and blooms trailing outside in, to our house , to our heart corners, and to windowsill miracles of carrot tops and potato eyes ,breaking the dormancy and rejoicing in Creation from my new mother essence.

Emerging like crocuses from snow, jellybeans of triumph, a maternal instinct , this intuition for nurturing a gift of tending to be proclaimed in His name.

I can witness triumph and bear disappointment as caretaker of germinating and clinging tendrils. With inspiration and firmness and steadfast patient waiting , for the sun to quell storms and the moon to illuminate grace, I can turn over flower beds and fluff the pillows of my divine abundance.

I pray to impart this living with passion and following of conscience, on those grown in my womb , most of all. Protect and prune and stake up in support, so with tender communion may they stand and bloom .

May they feel peaceful rejoicing in lilac blooms , crowns of assurance in delicate fragrant clusters, sprinkled about rural fields, and planted with promise by communities , bundles of cut stems adorning spring lit tabletops.

I accept and have internalized that the shrines of nature lead me to walk with Him always , as I work outside the home in these fields and garden plots that have chosen me. I parent with perseverance and trust , a covenant of white tulips and magnolia , soup pot herbs and backyard bouquets. Gardening is my prayer offered in reverence and action

I have felt the tear swell blessings of gingerly passed dandelion posies from five angels on earth , and remembered too, that long ago bittersweet honouring of my own .