Category: Gardening

Settling Even Deeper

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My grandparents owned the land,
worked the land, bound
to the earth by seasons of planting
and harvest.

They watched the sky, the habits
of birds, hues of sunset,
the moods of moon and clouds,
the disposition of air.
They inhaled the coming season,
let it brighten their blood
for the work ahead.

Soil sifted through their fingers
imbedded beneath their nails
and this is what they knew;
this rhythm circling the years.
They never left their land;
each in their own time
settled deeper.
~Lois Parker Edstrom “Almanac” from Night Beyond Black. © MoonPath Press, 2016

My husband and I met in the late 70’s while we were both in graduate school in Seattle, living over 100 miles away from our grandparents’ farms farther north in Washington. We lived farther still from my other grandparents’ wheat farm in Eastern Washington and his grandparents’ hog farm in Minnesota.

One of our first conversations together – the one that told me I needed to get to know this man better – was about wanting to move back to work on the land. We were descended from peasant immigrants from the British Isles, Holland and Germany – farming was in our DNA, the land remained under our fingernails even as we sat for endless hours studying in law school and medical school classes.

When we married and moved north after buying a small farm, we continued to work full time at desks in town. We’ve never had to depend on this farm for our livelihood, but we have fed our family from the land, bred and raised livestock, and harvested and preserved from a large garden and orchard. It has been a good balance thanks to career opportunities made possible by our education, something our grandparents would have marveled was even possible.

Like our grandparents, we watch in wonder at what the Creator brings to the rhythm of the land each day – the light of the dawn over the fields, the activity of the wild birds and animals in the woods, the life cycles of the farm critters we care for, the glow of the evening sun as night enfolds us. We are blessed by the land’s generosity when it is well cared for.

Now 46 years after that first conversation together about returning to farming, my husband and I hope to never leave the land. It brought us together, fed our family, remains imbedded under our fingernails and in our souls.

Each in our own time, we will settle even deeper.

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Fits Like a Glove

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It can be a gift or a private kind of distress,
depending on if you’ve found your purpose.
My friend, a physician and farmer, blends
her two passions into a life of caring.

Leaving her surgical gloves in the treatment room,
she dons leather work gloves when she returns
to the farm. This evening the old work gloves
are nestled together on a bench by the back door

as if one couldn’t function without the other.
They hold the form of her hands. The gloves
are dirty, the leather wrinkled, a hole worn
through the tip of the index finger, right hand.

Over years of service, gloves have protected
her hands as she treated deep wounds
in the clinic and in the barn. This gift!
Dare I say, her work fits her like a glove?
~Lois Edstrom “Gift of Work” from A Fragile Light

Nothing much to look at
lying on the shelf, one on
top of the other, an old man
resting his hands on a cane.
Dried-out yellow cowhide,
lines cut deep into the palms
from stones, weeds pulled.
Fingers crumpled, swollen
like grub worms shoveled
up in planting. An extra pair
of hands helping with lawn
work, flower beds, shrubs,
whatever else comes along.
A grief pulled on to bury
the old cat some kid in a
speeding pickup knocked
out of the street like he’d
kick a can. Or kneeling last
fall to unearth the blooming
rose suddenly plucked by
an ice storm, then shaking
rich compost loose from its
twisted fingers still clenched,
holding on for dear life.
~Ron Stottlemyer “Work Gloves”

My farm work gloves tend to look ragged at the end of a year of service. I always depend on being gifted a new pair at Christmas to start afresh. It can take awhile to break them in to the point where they feel like a “second skin.”

These gloves keep me from blistering while forking innumerable loads of smelly manure into wheelbarrows, but also help me unkink frozen hoses, tear away blackberry vines from fencing, pull thistle from the field and heavy hay bales from the haymow.

Over the years, I’ve gone through a few dozen work gloves which have protected my hands as I’ve cleaned and bandaged deep wounds on legs and hooves, pulled on foals during the hard contractions of difficult births, held the head of dying animals as they fall asleep one final time.

Without wearing my protective farm gloves over the years, my hands would be looking very much scarred up like my tired gloves do, full of rips and holes from the thorns and barbs of the world, sustaining scratches, callouses and blisters from the hard work of life.

But they don’t.

Thanks to these gloves, before I retired, I was presentable for my “day” work as a doctor where I would don a different set of gloves many times a day as I tended to my patients’ wounds and worry.

But my work gloves don’t tell my whole story of gratitude.

I’m thankful to a Creator God who doesn’t wear gloves when He goes to work in our world:
-He gathers us up even when we are dirty, smelly, and unworthy.
-He eases us into this life when we are vulnerable and weak,
and carries us gently home as we leave this world, weak and vulnerable.
-He holds us as we bleed from self and other-inflicted wounds.
-He won’t let us go, even when we fight back, or try not to pay attention, or care who He is.

He hangs on to us for dear life.

And this God came to live beside us
with hands just like ours~
tender, beautiful, easy-to-wound hands
that bled
because He didn’t need or want to wear gloves
for what He came to do~

His hands bear evidence of His love…

photo of a plowman teamster’s hand by Joel De Waard
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contains these lyrics by Kim Andre Arnesen:
Moving like the rise and fall of wings
Hands that shape our calling voice
On the edge of answers
You’ve heard our cry, you’ve known our cry…

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A Meadow of Delight

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On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
~John O’Donohue from “Beannacht“

We all stumble, bearing the bruises and scars of our fall.
We all waken to gray days when there seems no point in going on.
We all can be sucked into the darkest thoughts,
tunneling ever more deeply.

In those moments, those days, those months,
may we be wrapped tightly in love’s cloak of invisibility:
and darkness swallow us no longer~
we follow a brightening path of light and color,
with contentment and encouragement,
our failing feet steadied,
the gray kaleidoscoped,
the way to go illuminated with hope.

May our brokenness be forever covered in such blessings.

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Winged With Celestial Azure

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Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,
   Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest
   The message of some God.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Flower-de-Luce

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little.  And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.
~Louise Glück “The Wild Iris”

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
~Mary Oliver “Blue Iris”

May your blooms be floriferous and in good form,
Distinctive, with good substance, flare, and airborne,
With standards and falls that endure, never torn.
May you display many buds and blooms sublime,
In graceful proportion on strong stalks each day,
Gently floating above the fans and the fray.
May you too reach toward the moon and stars,
Bloom after bloom, many seasons in the sun,
Enjoying your life, health, and each loved one,
Until your living days are artfully done.
~Georgia Gudykunst  “Iris Blessing”

Whenever I allow my eye to peer inside
an iris, it takes all my attention.


I need a flotation device
and depth finder as
I’m likely to get lost,
sweeping and swooning
through inner space
of complex tunnels, canyons and corners,
then coming up for air and diving in again
to journey into exotic locales
draped in silken hues.

This fairy land of petals on a stem,
is birthed by the creative genius of God.

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Revery Alone Will Do…

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To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, a
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
~Emily Dickinson

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine

Pollinators are having a rough time of it these days, combating man-made insecticides or failing to find flowering weeds to visit given the wide-spread use of herbicides. Plus, there is the American penchant for mowing grassy landscapes to look perfectly uniform and weed-free.

When I see a honey or bumble bee happily doing its job, it is a cause for celebration.

I was thrilled to see the latest research reported today demonstrating the ability of a flowering plant, like a snapdragon in the study, to “hear” (through vibro-acoustic signals) the buzz of an approaching pollinator, responding instantly by increasing its nectar volume and sweetness.
The postulated feedback mechanism is that pollinators will be more attracted to a plant that “rewards” their visit, thereby increasing the likelihood of ongoing pollination visits and survival of further generations of both creatures.

This world depends on a revery of communication we can only begin to understand – between plant to plant, plant to insect — a daydream of connections bringing the spicy smell of pollen from a million flowers to the lowly feet of the bee, which generates more of both as well as honey for you and me.
May it be, may it be, may it bee…

May we know such reverie.

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A Blink of God’s Eye…

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Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.
~L.M. Montgomery

One has to wonder where they got
their reputation for pansiness.
Purple and proud, or any color
you might imagine, they grow
where they want to grow, despite the cold,
so much unlike their flashy cousins,
impatiens, petunias, scarlet sage,
petals falling off at first frost,
hardly hearty at all.
Keep your prima donna blossoms,
loud and boastful annuals, brief
and seedless. I’ll take the pansies
of the world, unassuming, resilient,
quietly doing what they know to do
~Scott Owen “Pansies”

As a seed, I was shot out the back end of a blue jay
when, heedless, she flew over the meadow.
She had swallowed me in my homeland when she spied me
lying easy under the sun—briefly, I called her Mother
before I passed through her gullet like a ghost.
In a blink of God’s eye I was an orphan. I trembled
where I fell, alone in the dirt. That first night
was a long night, early May and chilly, and I remember
rain filled my furrow. I called out for mercy—
only a wolverine wandered by. I cursed my luck,
I cursed the happenstance of this world, I smelled
his hot stink, but he nosed me deep into the mud—
this was the gift of obscurity. I germinated, hidden
from the giants of earth, the jostling stalks,
the various, boisterous bloomers, and this was my salvation.
After seven days and nights I pushed through—
yes. Here I am, kissable: your tiny, purple profusion.
~Lisa Bellamy “Wild Pansy”

The world is in sore need of a cure for the grumbles.

Fortunately, it exists right outside in our back yards, along sidewalks and in gravelly vacant lots.

A cheerful face is irresistible to all but the crabbiest among us, guaranteed to bring a smile every time.

Beyond the obvious charm exists a depth of heart — roots able to thrive in the thinnest of soil, at home among rocks and weeds,  resilient even when tromped on.

We carry its seeds on the tread of our boots despite our grumbling and help spread the good news: anger left unfed will dry up and blow away.

Yet the constant loyal heart of the pansy will last. 
It keeps smiling back – simply a twinkle in God’s eye.

For pansies are, I think, the little gleams
Of children’s visions from a world of dreams,
Jewels of innocence and joy and mirth,
Alight with laughter as they fall to earth.

So tread not rashly, children, lest you crush
A part of childhood in a thoughtless rush.
Would you not treat them gently if you knew
Pansies are little bits of children too?
~R.X. Lehmann from “Pansies”

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Come And Have Breakfast

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A lily shivered
at His passing,
supposing Him to be
the Gardener.
~Margaret D. Smith “Easter morning, yesterday”
from A Widening Light -Poems of the Incarnation

It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there.
~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?”
They knew it was the Lord.
John 21:12

It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.

We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him only the Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.

God knows this about us.  So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.

He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.

Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.

This is no ordinary Gardener.

When He offers up a meal of His Word, the gift is nothing less than Himself.

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Farewell, February Face

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“Why, what’s the matter, 
That you have such a February face, 
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” 
–  William Shakespeare,  Much Ado About Nothing

The wrap-up to February feels like spring is flirting with us.
But will winter really ever be finished?

Our doldrums are deep; a brief respite of sun and warmth too rare.

We feel it in the barn as we go about our daily winter routine. The Haflingers are impatient and yearn for freedom, over-eager when handled, sometimes banging on the stall doors in their frustration at being shut in,  not understanding that the alternative is to stand outside all day in cold rain and wind. To compensate for their confinement, we start grooming off their thick winter coats, urging their hair to loosen and curry off in sheets over parts of their bodies, yet otherwise still clinging tight. 

The horses are a motley crew right now, much like a worn ’60s shag carpet, uneven and in dire need of updating. I prefer that no one see them (or me) like this. Eventually I know the shag on my horses will come off, revealing the sheen of new short hair beneath, but when I look at myself, I’m unconvinced there is such transformation in store for me.

Cranky, I  put one foot ahead of the other, oblivious to the subtle seasonal renewal around me, refusing to believe even in the possibility.

It happened today. 
Dawn broke bright and blinding so I headed outside and stumbled across something extraordinary.

A patch of snowdrops sat blooming in a newly cleared space in our farmyard, visible now only because of bramble removal done last fall. These little white upside down flowers were planted decades ago around our house and yard. There they’ve been, year after year, harbingers of the long-awaited spring to come in a few short weeks, sometimes covered by the overgrowth and invisible to me in my self-absorbed blindness. 

I was astonished that someone, many many years ago, had carried these bulbs around the farm, planting them, hoping they might bless another soul sometime somehow. The blossoms had sprung from their sleep beneath the covering of years of fallen leaves and blackberry vines.

It was as if I’d been physically hugged by this someone long dead, now flesh and blood beside me, with work-rough hands, and dirty fingernails, and broad brimmed hat, and a satisfied smile. This secret gardener is no long living, so I mentally reach back across those years in gratitude, showing my deep appreciation for the time and effort it took to place a foretaste of spring in an unexpected and hidden place.

I am thus compelled to look for ways to leave such a gift for someone to find 70 years from now as they likewise stumble blindly through too many gray days full of human drama, frailty and flaw. Though I will be long gone,  I can reach across the years to grab them, hug them in their doldrums, lift them up and give them hope for what is to come.

It is the peeling away of winter’s shaggy coat, revealing the fresh smoothness of spring glistening underneath.

What an astonishing thought that it was done for me, and in reaffirming that promise of renewal,  I might do it for another.

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Things to Be Done

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There are many things to be done today
and it’s a lovely day to do them in

Each thing a joy to do
and a joy to have done

I can tell because of the calm I feel
when I think about doing them

I can almost hear them say to me
Thank you for doing us

And when evening comes
I’ll remove my shoes and place them on the floor

And think how good they look
sitting?… standing?… there

Not doing anything
~ Ron Padgett “Inaction of Shoes” from Collected Poems.

Every day after work he’d sit in his armchair
with its antimacassar and its plush burgundy velour
and she’d kneel on the floor to unfasten the laces,
loosen the tongues, and lift out his feet.
When I was ten I stayed for a week
and did it for her. He thought I did it 
for him.
~Andrea Hollander Budy “My Grandmother Taking Off My Grandfather’s Shoes” from When She Named Fire

I did not grow up in a household that took time off.  Time was redeemed by work, and work was noble and honorable and proved we had a right to exist.

Vacation road trips were rare and almost always associated with my father’s work.  When he came home from his desk job in town, he would immediately change into his farm clothes and put in several hours of work outside, summer or winter, rain or shine, light or dark.

My mother did not work in town while we were children, but worked throughout her day inside and outside the house doing what farm wives and mothers need to do: growing, hoeing, harvesting, preserving, washing, cleaning, sewing, and most of all, being there for us.

As kids, we had our share of chores that were simply part of our day as our work was never done on a farm. When we turned ten, we began working for others: babysitting, weeding, barn and house cleaning, berry picking.  I figure I put in over 60 years of gainful employment – there were times I worked four part-time jobs at once because that was what I could put together to keep things together.

I know I’ve missed out on much of life being a “nose to the grindstone” person.

Now retired, I try a different way to redeem my time: to notice, to record, to observe, to appreciate beauty that still exists in the midst of chaos and cataclysm..

Life isn’t all about non-stop labor, yet we get on with our work because work is about showing up when and where we are needed.

And we are always needed, by someone, somewhere, somehow. That’s the reason why we’re here.

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Retell Its Loveliness

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The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   
began remembering all down her thick length,   
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing
beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
~Galway Kinnell “Saint Francis and the Sow”

None of us trust our own loveliness;
we who are concerned with a blemish
or an unusual shape of toe or nose.

Yet we are made as we are
as an image of our Maker.

If we consider the purpose for which we’re created,
then we are just as we should be –
blessed with exact shape and size and spirit
with which we serve and bring joy to others.

Our loveliness must be retold
so we believe it thoroughly –
as a bud is all about blossoming,
a mother pours her love into the empty,
a father leads and guides the lost.

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