On Her Knees in the Church of Dirt and Flowers

April 9

Friends sometimes ask why I am a gardener. To them, all the digging and planting is too much hard work – and weeding is just boring. Although I have never thought of gardening this way, I can understand why they feel as they do. It’s the same way I react when I read about a Facebook friend’s daily three-mile runs.

For me, gardening is as much about the heart and spirit as it is about the aching muscles and muddy knees. I’m certainly impetuous about buying seeds and plants, and testy about wanting the growing season to arrive immediately. But in my gardens, I have learned patience, developed the ability to see and feel grateful for every new stage of green life (except dandelions,) and have found a sense of peace I can’t reach anywhere else.

Over the last thirty years, I have come to think of my garden as the Church of Dirt and Flowers. I go to my garden when I’m filled with worry about things I can’t change. Digging into hard dirt with my trusty shovel helps burn off the anxiety that would still be hovering if I tried my usual escape: a cup of tea and a book. Late last summer and into the fall, I spent every afternoon clearing deep-rooted weeds from overgrown beds in the backyard of our new home in northern Idaho. Our Seattle-area house wasn’t selling? Paying two mortgages? Missing family and friends on the west side of the Cascade Mountains? Too shy to get involved at our new church here? All those troubles temporarily blew away like the prairie dust in the nearby fields, while I let my muscles (such as they are) take over, and gave my worries a rest.

My husband Lee’s favorite garden task is pruning shrubbery and trees. Earlier in our marriage – OK, fine, it was last summer – I had an unfortunate tendency to micro-manage any weeding he tried to do near my flower beds: “Ohmygosh! That’s not a dandelion! You just weeded a baby delphinium plant! A blue one! Don’t you have something to prune over on the other side of the house? The far side?”)

For all the years of our marriage, Lee has held high-stress newspaper jobs. Rigid daily deadlines, multiple projects to juggle, stories to edit, people to mentor. Often on weekends, he’s turning my latest gardening brainstorm into reality. (Soon he’ll be digging wide, deep holes and then wrestling four new apple trees into the ground for me.) There’s little time to worry about the newsroom when you’re hoping your back or shoulder doesn’t quit on you. But when I’m between brainstorms that demand his strength and muscle, Lee will find a tree or shrub that needs pruning, or a gravel path to weed. I have watched him sitting in gravel, hand-pulling tiny weeds from among the little rocks, and wondered how he had the patience for such work. I have come to realize that the repetitive, stress-free nature of the weeding is also its beauty for him. No deadlines to race. No editorials to write. No phone calls. He doesn’t have to worry about whether he’s doing it wrong. He doesn’t have to concentrate very hard. He can sit in the sunshine and pull the little weeds. Kaylee, our golden retriever, will be sprawled nearby, usually on top of the patch Lee is trying to weed. Lee can stop and toss her a tennis ball. He can look up at the sky. He can just…be. 

During the seemingly endless limbo between winter and spring, my garden can lead me to patience. I can find joy in little miracles that would be only too easy to overlook. Last week I removed the autumn mulch I’d spread to protect plants I had brought with us when we moved from the Seattle area. The de-mulching held as much drama for me as Christmas morning does for a child. Under the wrapping, what will I find? The doll I’d dreamed of – or a flannel nightgown? As I knelt and gently moved away the wet leaves, I found delicate green shoots. My beloved blue delphiniums had survived their first winter in their new home. Hope and faith. That’s what I, unseeking, find, season after season, in my garden.

I needed both last fall, when I realized I could be heading toward a new life as a semi-recluse unless I reached out beyond my reading chair and flower garden. So I sent a timid e-mail to our new church, asking if I might help with children and teenagers there. And with that small step outward, I have found a new ministry, a new church family, dear new friends, and a roomful of high-spirited kids I can teach and learn from every Wednesday night and Sunday morning. I might not ever have had the courage to walk into that church of brick and stained glass if I had not first spent time on my knees in the Church of Dirt and Flowers.

.