Preparing for Plenty

It's winter, but sometimes the cold lets up and the evenings smack of summer. We want to linger outside, leave the front door open, wander among the greenery until the colours fade into twilight.

Last week was such a time. I found myself outside after work, hunting out iris bulbs suffocating under the ferns and moving them to a new rose-bed home. Picking off dead arum lily heads and counting the new ones poking through the leaf canopy. Pulling up weeds and attempting to prune the roses (I hope they survive the onslaught!). Uncovering the first daffodil shoots from beneath old matted grass (is spring nearly here already?). Sitting still and watching an unafraid field mouse snack on Mixed Poultry Grain - did you know doves are classified as mixed poultry (well, they enjoy the food, anyway)?

Right now my garden is quite unimpressive. Only the arums are thriving and taking over. Everything else is bare-ground, leafless-stick dead. But look closely - there are tiny pink knobs on those stems, a promise of the new growth to come. Soon, very soon my dears, an explosion of leaves and fruits and flowers will surprise you. One day it will be bare, and the next it won't.

My garden isn't the only thing marking time. My heart and soul is too. I'm in the waiting room of God's Will, waiting to hear His next directions, waiting to find out what's next. I've trimmed back the old growth, I've cut my shoots down to the minimum, I've cleared the ground and pulled up some weeds that were taking root unnoticed.

And now I'm waiting. Treading water, marking time, counting the seconds as the clock ticks on. It's been a long time now, half a year nearly, but I'm still waiting. I can no more force the next growth spurt than I can make my roses produce blooms out of season. I can no more blog eloquently on deep God stuff (that isn't really in my head and heart, that I don't fully understand right now) than I can ask my tomato beds to give me a crop immediately.

The only thing I can do is wait and enjoy the view. What a view!