French Lit finally pays off

In November, Grace and I went to visit Jacki and her family.  The first day we were there, we raked leaves.  It had to be done, and Jacki thought it would be fun for our desert girl Gracie to experience the leaf piling and jumping.



She was right.

For the first hour I provided unskilled labor, I really enjoyed the raking, and the clearing out of something old to make room for something new.  I didn’t think about it too much, I just raked.  For the next hour my hip started to hurt and I thought mostly about what kind of people plant so damned many trees in their yard, if they know that they have to rake them all up every year.  Third hour, reinforcements arrived, and I helped clear out a couple flower beds. 

That was when I realized us desert dwellers are missing out.  In places like Arizona, while there is some winterizing we do in our yards and gardens, it is nothing like what you do in places that grow things.  And it seemed like to me, the process of clearing dried stalks, and pulling up roots in a garden you planned and planted requires a great deal of faith. 

You have to believe that clearing out things makes room for new things.  You have to hope that seeds that have dropped have fallen on fertile soil, and that after some time, some weather, and some water they will grow.  It takes a leap of faith to lose something without really knowing what you will get the next year when the sun comes out again.

You will have flowers again.  



I don’t mean for everything to be so clearly metaphorical, really.  I thought all this just really thinking of gardening.  But now that I read what I have written, I have to come back and close with a little Voltaire.

Metaphorically speaking, it was good for me to work in the dirt to remember that we need to cultivate our garden.  And if we do, we will have flowers.

Next post assignment: frivolity.  I’m on it.

Advertisement