Iris

   This is iris season, and it seems in many yards, there are a variety of blooms gracing carefully arranged gardens complimenting front porches, sidewalk shoulders, and simple gatherings of flower clumps.  The colors and their variety are really astounding.  Russet reds, sunny yellows, purple splashes, and pure white can be the sole color or a mix of patterns that draws the eye in.  Green stalk leaves shoot up surrounding the flowers, like spear bearing foot men protecting their ladies grace. 

   I love spring flowers.  Not just because it’s wonderful to drink in the color after a long white winter, but as a sign in and of themselves of renewal that is coming.  But, I think one of the favorite parts of the iris for me is the variety and diversity of them.  So many beautiful colors, sizes, and complexity of blooms can be combined in one flower bed.  They all complement each other, each one adding it own shade of color depth.  I have a great privilege of enjoying many diverse people around me.  From different parts of the country, different countries, the people are all so different, and yet so similar.  It is something I enjoy to be able to see the depth of diversity in that human garden. 

   I think the other thing that I love about irises, and many flowers in general, is that they are something that the humblest and richest of us can enjoy.  Shared by many green thumbed gardeners who discover that they have a commonality in the love of growing things, clumps, clippings, and seeds are shared over fences and around organizations.  I see a very humble home many times in a week, it is not the most beautiful home or most elaborate.  Instead, it looks as if it needs a great deal of care.  But, in a side yard carefully tended clump are a mixture of yellow irises.  It’s like a bit of sunshine that landed in their yard and decided that it liked the green so much it would stay. 

    I love flowers, but I don’t love to weed!  Oh it comes in fits and starts where I want to get stick my hands into garden gloves and feel the pull of the weeds and the smell of the warm dirt.  I do enjoy seeing the cleanly orderliness of the flower beds afterwards.  But, in my mind – I pull weeds once in the year and it should just be done!  Some of those weeds are just annoyingly persistent.  And that is one of the thins that I also applaud irises and other flowers for when they don’t need a lot of tending.  These are no fragile hot house flowers that will wilt if they do not receive 4.2 hours of sunlight and 14 tablespoons of filtered water in an eyedropper.  Okay, so I exaggerate (a bit), but these are hardy flowers.  The bulbs are placed in the earth and there they will come and grow and spread for years.   It is their resilience in a Midwest that often faces snow and ice storms over long winter months.  I want to be resilient as well, to be planted in good soil and then allowed to grow and bloom yearly. 

    Enjoy the blooms from the yard.

Inheritance

Knock, knock, knock; the door being knocked on was my alarm yesterday morning. A small Jack Russell Terrier came up to join me on the bed for a morning snuggle and rub. She is a sweet pup and gave me a good excuse for not jumping right out of bed. I was tired and struggling to get moving.
Finally convincing myself, and the dog, that we really should get up and face the day; I donned my work jeans, an old t-shirt, and pulled my hair back into a somewhat short pony tail. The idea was to get to Grandma and Grandpa’s house before the heat of the day really set in. My grandmother has had so many beautiful plants in her yard over the years that I think her whole hand must be green, forget just the green thumb thing. As a child, I remember leaving the kitchen and walking onto a concrete porch and the snowball bushes greeted me. Big white fragrant blooms and glossy dark green leaves were the gateway to a botanical playground. This was where I was headed, though it is not the yard of my childhood. It has been several years of poor health for my grandparent’s and the yard was showing the loss of energy that occurred as a result. Weeds were poking through, but the flowers were still there and still strong. My mother and I came with coffee cans, the plastic kind, rooting hormone, and trash bags. You see, these plants are in a way part of my inheritance, my legacy from this grandmother. She loved the beauty in the hybrid roses just as she did the wild roses, the weeds others threw away she could still name them and see them as beautiful.
“Now, try to get some with the roots on it,” Grandma said as I would dig. My mind drew a connection as I traced the roots to the dirt and dug deeply around them. Our inheritance, our legacy is something like that. It is a long rooted thing. By the end of a hardworking, very hot, couple of hours, the coffee cans were full of starts. Roses, snowball bushes, lilies, and other plants were tucked in with their native dirt, deposited for the day and night on an aunt’s shady porch and watered. My grandmother sees beauty in things others call weeds, potential in what others call hopeless. It is a beautiful inheritance that she has given and is giving her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Then, leaving there and after a much needed shower, I headed to a friend’s house. There are some friends if you are fortunate enough to find, you must tend and maintain the friendship because it is truly a priceless and precious part of your life. It was to this friend’s house I went next. Immediately surrounded by a comfortable place, where I feel welcomed so much by the fact that she doesn’t have to rush around like a mad woman trying to pick up. Isn’t that nice, when you are comfortable enough with someone to not have to do that on a very busy day, knowing that they didn’t come to see the house but you? This is a very special family, a husband and wife and son. The little boy is also receiving an inheritance. He can’t trace it back to a rosebush that his grandmother’s grandmother had at this point, but he has an inheritance nonetheless. It is one that his parents and grandparents are building for him, with their love, attention, instruction, teaching, discipline, joy, and care. I love to watch these two in action, because they are intentionally parenting. In other words, they are intentionally and continuously examining their role as parents and seeking to do their absolute best.
Intentionally looking beyond the names others attach to “flowers or weeds”, intentionally parenting and modeling behavior, intentionally seeking out the roots and caring for them and taking the risk of failure for the risk of success. It is a legacy indeed.

Flower Beds

It’s that time of year when the flower beds should be cleaned out and prepared for the new spring. Yesterday, we spent time in the yard and for me it was time to weed. There were also new flowers to plant.

While weeding is not my favorite thing to do, I enjoy the clean flower beds and the new plants which come up. Yesterday, I was enjoying the sun and the results of the weeding. In that time, on my knees, dirt under my fingernails, I was thinking of how God clears weeds out of my life. What really was impressed on me was that for God to weed and plant in my life, this means that he is right beside me, kneeled down and working in the soil of my life. What a wonder that the God who created the universe is willing to kneel down next to me, in the dirt and make the flower beds of my life beautiful.

Dirty Knees

Silence may be good for the soul, but so is some sunshine on my back and dirt under my fingernails. My back was just on fire today, sitting at work I would squirm from one side to another. Finally I gave up and dispersed with the chair choosing work by standing instead. Coming home, I was looking forward to getting into the yard and weeding.

Weeding as a help for a sore back? Yes, in this case – I knew that what I really needed was the movement of my back stretching as I bent for weeds, reaching for roots deeply rooted. Dandelions, sticky weeds, clovers, grasses – they all came out of the ground and were tossed behind me. My knees grew red as I kneeled on the grass and dirt. Breathing deeply, I smelled dirt, sweat, and grasses.
Dirty knees are good for me, and not just to stretch out my back. Dirty knees mean that I am recognizing and working on removing weeds. Sometimes, I can’t pull them out with my hands. Their roots go deep and I may need a shovel. There are times in life when I need to pull out roots of weeds. By myself, sometimes I can break them off and at least make it a bit prettier. But, the weeds just grow back. I need a shovel, I need the Master Gardening skills of Jesus to come and get rid of my weeds. Digging carefully around the plants he has planted, he removes the weeds and burrs. It is much easier to recognize and get rid of weeds when I’m down and getting my knees dirty.