We'll See What Comes

This afternoon we all ended up outside. The guys charged ahead, while I lingered just long enough to push back the curtains, heave open the windows and kill the heat. Spring burst in!

After the ceremony of letting the animals out to wander (Anna, the Wonder Dog, Ringo the.... I suddenly realized he has no nick-name.... uh, Ringo the Cat, and our bird brained chickens: Flora & Merryweather- RIP Fauna) it was time to get to work.

Seth drove the tractor (riding mower- technically- but we call it a tractor. I think that makes it sound more impressive than it is) down to our little garden plots and began dumping the last of the top soil into the beds. I took my garden rake, churned everything up, made it nice and loose and finally evened everything. JET*, our 3 year old son, decided to make a volcano in the top soil and Leviathan* (our 19 month old son) sat atop the tractor vroom-vrooming to himself with his helmet on (safety first, I guess, but he wears it for the style). 

*JET & Leviathan are aliases. I would never name my kids that. ;)

It was our first time gardening "together" as a family. 

As I was pushing tiny seeds into the ground with JET it dawned on me that this was something I would want to remember. This moment in time, this flash of his youth, his discovering, my discovering, the warm sun and the cool breeze and the excessive amounts of honeybees zig-zagging through our Purple Deadnettle on our sloped backyard here at House with the Big Yard: oh yes, all of this.

I told JET we were planting peas and handed him his seeds. He expertly pushed them down into the earth the appropriate 1/2" - 1" the packet instructed. We followed along the edge of the bed alternating turns. We then planted 2 types of spinach, and 4 types of salad greens. Three quarters of the bed were seeded- next is waiting for my kale sprouts to get more "true leaves" and I can move them out to their final resting place.

This may sound silly, but I'm putting it out there anyway. I feel very close to God in my backyard. I feel this beautiful peace that comes over me, as if all is right in the world, in my family, in me. Turmoil ceases and all that remains is His creation. I should also add that my yard is hardly perfect. It's scrubby, bare in places, over run with weeds off all variations, is host to hundreds of mosquitos in the summer and you'd better not walk barefoot in the backyard because you'll surely step on a piece of broken glass or chicken poo. 

But all that fades from view when you see the wind blowing through the trees, when suddenly rows and rows of mushrooms pop up overnight, when you look up and there's not one, but a pair of barred owls swooping through your yard, when the fireflies blink and flash outside your window, when you hear the gravel crunch beneath your feet, when you notice how very blue the sky is and how close the moon looks tonight....

I love it here. My best friend and her family stayed here when we first moved in last May (2011). We were all standing outside, the kids (mine and hers) were playing happily. Blue birds were fluttering through the backyard and her husband suddenly said to me, "It's like the Kingdom here." And maybe he was just being nice (I mean, what a lovely thing to say!), but I feel like that one sentence aptly described the feeling of peace and beauty I get just being here. 

So. I'm writing this whole blog in dedication to my journeys through gardening and all the things I desperately want to remember. Moments with family, moments with friends, moments with God. And I guess, we'll just have to see what comes. 

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