The season is turning. You can feel it. You can smell it. You can sense it. The seeds planted in spring have come to fruition, mostly. Some flowers are past their prime while others are hanging on by a thread hoping the bees and butterflies will still find a drink or two before flying on their way. Harvest is happening…zucchinis galore, tomatoes mounting up, sweet corn finding its way to hands aching to drip of butter and yellow beauty.
Driving through a neighborhood on the westside of Saint Paul, I saw this sign standing tall above a community garden. “Garden of Good Hearts: All are welcome here.” The site of it made me smile and I felt the warmth that happens when you are in the presence of something bigger and better than your own small self. Whoever decided to create and place this sign knew the goodness that can happen when people garden, when others witness to the gardening, when humans remember our deep dependence on Earth’s goodness. Our hearts are warmed. Our spirits are lifted.
Seeing it I was reminded of a paragraph in a book I have recently been reading. In Kent Nerburn’s book Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life, he writes: “Life, death, earth and sky all come together in the intimacy of a garden’s space. It is a metaphor too rich to exhaust, a perfect microcosm of the universe’s deepest wisdom, a constant reminder that we must accept the forces of nature if we are to survive.”
Yes. The garden is both reality and metaphor. We would be wise to remember this as we look out at gardens we planted or that were planted on our behalf for our nourishment and enjoyment. The flowers that are fading in my garden right now remind me to stay awake to the beauty that is offered to me on a daily basis as it will soon fade to memory. The vegetables I am enjoying are the gift of labor that is not my own nudging me to never be cavalier about the food I eat or the gratitude I need lift to both the farmer and those that brought it to my plate. Remembering how all these are in communion with the Earth and Sky, the Sun and rain, the soil and pollinators should make me a humble, light-footed being.
Outside my door there is a clematis plant that is the Queen of the garden in these days. All summer it has been reaching for the Sun, digging its roots deep into the soil, making its growing magic happen with only a teeny, tiny bit of help from my feeble hands. Its glory always shines forth during the days of the Minnesota State Fair where we first saw it blooming and knew we had to have a plant like it in our garden. Its lavender flowers are opening to the world and delight of countless bees that hum and eat and eat and hum. Walking past it…if you are able to not stop and stare…you can hear the music of the universe alive and at work. I often think it looks like the fireworks that signal the day’s end of the Fair bursting color all over the sky.
In the changing of the seasons there is the reminder of the fleeting nature of life and also its rich offerings, its infinite beauty, its bending toward goodness. The invitation of the garden, the garden of good hearts, is to be present, awake, aware and to welcome it all,to celebrate it, to store it up for a time that will soon turn less colorful, more frigid. The invitation to ‘accept the forces of nature’ is always there filled with the hope of survival.
May we join our good hearts together welcoming the gifts of such wisdom.