I cannot write this morning. I’m still recovering and my brain cells need to be dusted off by warm air and sunshine. But Rick Visser can write. And he does write about topics close to my heart.
Here he posts a brief entry, an ode almost, to life at a cellular level. And he reminds me of an essay I wrote years ago for our local paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, on why I garden.
Mr. Visser goes first. When I Walk Quietly in the Morning Garden | The Hungry Gap.
And now, me.
The ground may be covered in snow but my sap still rises when I open the mail box sand see the first seed catalog nestled inside. It means it’s time to plan my garden, gather materials and seeds and descend to the basement to start growing my crops.
How do I end up knee deep in dirt, every summer?
Gardening was my Mom’s legacy. It was in the earth of the dozen gardens she grew that she taught me about living and dying and being reborn.
Gardening roots me. It grounds me in beauty and order and chaos.
Clik here to view.
It is easy to see infinity when you are surrounded by it.
Sometimes, when I am sitting on the moist earth, the sun just beginning to rise and my dogs lying by my side, I swear I can see infinity.
It is the same feeling I had when I held my first grandchild.
There, in that tiny child, I saw years and lifetimes and generations marching out before me, stacked deep and deeper behind me. The sensation was overwhelming.
In that instant, I could see my daughter, my mother, her mother and her mother before her and I knew I was holding a moment in time — never before beheld, never to come again.
In both moments, the garden and the grandchild, the veil lifts. I feel timeless, part of the past, present and future and I feel hope. If you garden, you feel it too.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
