It has been a long winter. The longest in memory for me and my Maryland neighbors – but perhaps that’s just the way it feels in the wake of weeks of snow and ice, followed by an uplifting but too-brief peak of sun, then bone-chilling dampness and rain for days. Cold, again? Yes. So the garden gloves go back on the shelf and we pull on our sweaters and wait it out.
And, in this grey landscape, we cherish the bright spots: like the first daffodils! I saw them just days ago. They were still tight in their buds, but like a lesson learned over and over again, I knew they would emerge, and today, here they are, open to the first sun we've had in a what seems like a very long time. Spring, I think, is the very origin of faith.
Other signs whisper of warmth and color to come: patches of purple crocuses (does anyone ever plant these, or do they just come up on their own every year?), an early spray of yellow forsythia down the block, a sprinkling of snow drops in my own front yard.
Last week (in that brief sunny period) I watched as my neighbor crouched in his curbside garden with his two young daughters (ages 2 and 4), showing them how to draw a line in the soil and sprinkle lettuce seeds in a (relatively) straight line, then gently cover them up. When the tender leaves emerge, and the girls taste what they’ve planted, it will be an epiphany – look at what we did! Even though I have sprinkled lettuce seeds year after year in my own garden, when the babies appear like green fuzz on the soil, it still seems like a miracle. And it is.
The twist to this lesson in faith: Planting a garden only underscores the promise of spring. The earth will come around, whether we believe in it or not.
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