Planting

It is going to drop to 9 degrees in St. Paul this week.

I know that because now that my son is attending his first year of college there, I keep track of the weather as though it somehow connects me to him.

I've always loved Minnesota -- the snow and the cold. But this weekend, I was grateful for the forgiving Philly weather that allows procrastinating gardeners to delay into November the turning of the earth and the planting of bulbs for the spring.

The wind was biting and the earth heavy with the coming of winter and I couldn't find my gardening gloves, but I dug two holes -- one for daffodils and one for tulips. I hope the daffodils aren't in too deep of shade and the tulips in not too deep of depression to get "wet feet." I wonder if I planted them the required 6 inches -- the cold made me hurry.

When I worried aloud to my mother about whether I planted them deep enough, she said she didn't know anything about the equinox. She's 99 and deaf; we laughed, and then she, a superior gardener in her day and still directing her son and daughter-in-law in planting her yard, said, "I never worried much about planting bulbs; they always come up."

Forgiving weather and forgiving bulbs -- grace notes in the fall that forgotten for the next six months will become grace notes of color in the spring as against the brown earth and death of winter yellows and reds and pinks and purples will burst forth and remind one of the beauty and hope and life.

What do you plant in your life to remind you of the same?

--Pastor Dianne