I had another “wow” moment in my garden recently one evening. What’s a wow moment? It’s an experience you have, after a session in the garden (this one happened to involved pulling weeds and planting tomatoes), when you stand up and stop all activity.
You slowly look around you, your mind suddenly empty of all the buzzing that constantly fills your mind during the course of a busy day. And, believe me, when you’re in the nursery business the buzzing is pretty loud during the month of May! A friend calls it the hamster wheel turning in your head, and that’s a fairly accurate picture.
Calm washes over me as I survey the scene in front and around me. The sun is just beginning to slide behind the mountain, taking that fabulous Okanagan evening light into another dimension, washing the entire garden with a soft glow.
I don’t hear the traffic noise from the highway below any longer. Instead of thinking about the fires put out on the job today, and the smoldering piles that will simmer overnight only to erupt into flames tomorrow, the meetings to be attended this week, the parental responsibilities to be filled, my mind is occupied only by the scene I’m focused on, the garden I’ve been creating for sixteen years.
In late May, most years but especially this spring given the moisture we’ve been blessed with, I am in awe of what is happening out here. I can see the difference each day; perennials stretching out of the ground, leaves pushing into the space around them, buds forming, first one or two, then a dozen, then one hundred. Stand amongst the plants and you can feel the energy being created.
I think back to the garden when we bought this house. A young couple with a two year old child, we were excited beyond words to move in. I had an expanse of thin, weed-filled turf, three motley fruit trees and a cedar hedge to work with. The cedar hedge and a fraction of the original lawn remain.
Now I survey what God has directed me to create. Our two year old graduates from high school next month. The son who came into the world that next summer eleven weeks too early and weighing less than three pounds is a strapping teenager who looks at me straight in the eye and battles with me over the leftovers.
And the garden? The garden is a picture. It’s so much more than a collection of plants that I’ve collected and nurtured. Its physical and psychotherapy in one beautiful package. It’s a daily reminder of the awesome power
I toss the weeds onto the compost pile, take a final look around and head inside for the evening. The darkness is settling around me and as I look into the lit rooms of our house I see the shadow of my wife dancing on the walls as she moves around in the living room. All is well in the garden and elsewhere.
