Our Garden is Applause That is Quiet

It’s admittedly not much to look at.

Our small raised bed has weakening wood, the seedlings and sprouts are in disarray, and there’s a scattering of borage that’s about to rule one corner. It’s rainsoaked, a bit disorganized, not terribly well-tended. Its current aesthetic is wait and see. It is a small plot of patience.

I have, on my way in and out of the front door lately, paused by its side to ponder, regard, consider. Why?  Two weeks ago I dispersed, with a most unscientific and erratic glee, small handfuls of wildflower seeds from a store-bought packet. I tossed about little pockets of what looked like tiny bent twigs, sand bits, and burrs. Then I covered those seeds loosely with dirt and went on my way. I went to work and back. I carried food. Books, papers, lunches came and went.

But after days of rain some tiny, hairs-breadth little sproutlings are emerging. I crouch down in the mornings to look at them. It’s nothing really, that sitting and staring, but it’s also everything. This comfort. This stopping. This delight. It’s surprise and hope and nurturing and a tiny tip of awe. There’s mystery, elegance, and momentum. Growth. And blooms yet to come.

And I can’t help turning my gaze to my brothers and sisters on this path through cancer, and how horrible it can be, and how illuminating and surprising too. Turning to trust in the world again, to consider the days ahead, is, unlike planting, no easy gesture. This body that has given us life has also attempted to take it away.

I look at the ground and think of floods. Mud. Stones and hail.

The unresolvable, ongoing pendulums of illness, health, life, death. Sunlight, rain.

Yet here, in their tiny upstarts, stand future flowers: hollyhock, scarlet flax, bachelor’s button.

California poppy. Cosmos. Coreopsis.

Wild violets.

What can we do but plant? What can we do but wait?

And be here now, fully and with thanks, while they take root.