Gardening Your Heart…and Your Weeds

A look at Lent through the eyes of my garden

Ash Wednesday ashes strewn on her forehead, she pores over her Bible from the wrought-iron table. I’ve noticed that she doesn’t come out here all that often, even though the weather’s been nice.

Pages flip and she studies them thoughtfully, hemming and hawing and then scribbling her thoughts into a linen-covered notebook. It’s an interesting cadence: pause, hmmm, and the soft scribbling of her writing some more. I watch her, unblinking. I am a statue, after all.

Then, she closes her Bible with a snap, gathering her materials, and slides back inside. It’s noon, and the sun beats down on the dead grass and weeds I’m surrounded by. I guess that must be it, then…

Unless!

She returns back outside, this time with gardening shears, and pads over to me, approaching the two crepe myrtles that flank my presence. This is new.

She’s in her work blouse but some stretchy shorts, donning socks with those Birkenstock sandals that Jesus definitely would’ve worn if they’d existed back in 30 A.D. I watch her, eager to see her approach, but incredibly curious as to her next move. She’s not even wearing gloves! Where on earth is this going?

She unlocks the shears, assessing the leggy, leaf-bare plants. Then, she begins to prune them.

Snipsnipsnip go the shears. Little branches flit off the main crepe myrtle, thin and veinlike twigs that brushed up against other stronger branches. Dead seed pods are not spared. She trims them off, and the little pods crumble into infinitesimal pieces, much like the ashes she wears above her brow. On to the next tree she goes, trimming and trimming. The crepe myrtle seems lighter, and even I can see more clearly through those bare branches.

Then, with a surprisingly loud exhale, she turned her attention to me. Reverently, she brushes dirt off of my body.

There are many weeds around my feet. I’ve had my toes resting in the dirt ever since she placed me here, and I like that grounding. But her neglect has led to these weeds. Oh, these weeds!

Her eyebrows crinkle in an apology as she tugs at them now. Some release their grip immediately, putting up no fight. Others had started off innocently, even sprouting little purple flowers, as if they were trying to appease me, but they were still weeds.

Her fingernails are black now, and she digs them into the soil surrounding me, grabbing for the root systems of the weeds. She plucks and plucks and plucks and I feel like I can finally breathe again. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath all this time. I am a statue, after all.

My daughter, she looks at me again, a determined, penitent, meek smile on her face.

I know the weeds may return, but so will she. And she’ll keep plucking and pruning and persevering.

Even now as she enters into the desert, I sense that something is blooming.