Everyday Magic

Beloved: 
          I’ve pulled up more common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) than I left in my little flowerbed, else I’d have no space to grow other things.  The first year it got established.  Last year the lawn service sprayed pesticide too close but this year I told them to go away and look what’s happened!  So many big fat caterpillars munching down the leaves and two chrysalids hanging from my porch eaves.  There must be more nearby because yesterday a monarch was hovering about as I puttered in the yard yesterday.  My neighbor and I are as excited as kids in a classroom.
          I pick a tomato or two almost every day from the two plants I put in.  A third volunteer tomato vine has suddenly come on.  The tiny fruit on it may be big and ripe before the frost.  Friends share their bounty, so I still get enough to freeze for soup and pasta sauce.  Tomatoes, herbs and flowers are what I have space for now, the exact right amount to leave time for my grandkids, crafts and volunteer work.
          I cannot imagine ever not growing something, if only in a pot of dirt.  Some living plant to tend and trim and fuss over, for the simple magic of watching it come to bloom, to grow, go dormant and then come to life again, ever careless of the unceasing human drama around it.*  The slowness of the garden slows down my mind and spirit even as it amps up my body.  My watch says I did 9400 steps yesterday!  An hour can go by in which I think about nothing but which lavender branches to prune.
          If gardening isn’t your thing, no worries.  Maybe it’s running.  Or motorcycles.  Or baking bread.  But I do hope you have something removed from the rest of the everyday world pulling on you.  I hope you have something as magical to you as caterpillars and ripening tomatoes are to gardeners.  Because the world needs us at our best these days, clear-minded and ready for the work of being Jesus’ hands and heart.  I’m so grateful to be in it with all of you.

​~peace & prayers,
pastor annette

* I just remembered this book:  The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey.  A great read!