A Pause
It’s raining this morning, which is good for my back. It means no digging in the garden on my hands and knees. It will be a day of rest, and the payoff will be a moist garden once the rain stops. Nature finds a way, I guess, of taking care of children and old men. But even though I ache, I still also ache to keep going, to repair what neglect has torn asunder. It’s good to have a drive, I guess.
This weather pattern is what I always counted on in the past to ease my way into spring, to make the digging easy, to make the work less onerous. Rain brings soft dirt. And now it will happen again, and the old rhythms are appearing. And I like those rhythms, songs I can sing to myself. And if it weren’t for this writing, no one would even know I was doing it. It would simply be me and my yard, a man on his knees in the dirt trying to help beauty find a way.
And I suppose that’s the secret of gardens, it’s a way to control the world around you, to shrink things down to a manageable size and make it into something worth having. And how would things be if we made that a prerequisite for elected office. Have you ever gardened? Cultivated a plot of earth? Felt dirt beneath your fingernails? Physically ached from a day's work? Grown anything? Brought beauty into the world? I think they’re good questions and might be something to ponder on a rainy day.