Bounty

It has been a wild weather ride in the PNW lately, with a big, beautiful snowfall arriving like a gift the day after Christmas, followed by some of the coldest and wettest weather anyone--even the locals who've lived around here forever and the meteorologists who track these things for a living--can remember.

In tandem with the chill and unrelenting rain, Omicron has us all (maybe a generalization, but maybe not) feeling queasy right now. The vertical spike in case numbers, the confusion about why we're trying to keep track of positives at this point anyway, the staffing shortages here, there and everywhere threatening our healthcare and education systems, the exhaustion, the heartbreak, the inconvenience, the misinformation, the islanders bickering with one another, like kids trapped in the back seat on a too-long family road trip, about the newest take on who's responsible and what we're dealing with, and when, and how, and why? All of it. It all amounts to a pit in our collective stomach and an ache at our community's heart.

This morning, though, felt a little different. There was break in the rain and the day's temperature is mild, almost balmy: 54 degrees. When I got home from dropping Garner at school, I decided to head out to the garden--something I've been meaning but neglecting to do for weeks because of the weather--to assess and then manage the wreckage the rain had surely wrought.

Charlotte followed me through the gate, and started sniffing around the waterlogged beds and empty fountain, her tail wagging and ears pricked up because of this chance to do something together she hadn't expected. After a quick survey--things didn't look nearly as bad as I thought they would--I began to make my way around, picking up the forgotten pots one by one, pouring off the rainwater and bringing them into the dryish shelter of greenhouse, where they might recover and rehabilitate a little.

It was only when the last pot was inside, as I walked out and heard the greenhouse door click shut behind me, that I noticed the frilly green of carrot tops covering the raised bed in the corner, where I had planted far too many seeds last May. The whole garden sleeping, drenched, except for this. I walked over and began to dig with both hands, hoping hoping hoping and feeling giddy about the possibility of what I would find tucked in the soil.

My hands found a carrot, and then another, and another, and another, probably over a hundred in all--each one of them bigger and more beautiful than any of those I had so carefully tended to all summer long and picked in early September. Still standing beside the now-empty bed, I brushed one carrot clean as best I could and took a bite: bigger, more beautiful, and sweeter too.

I consider one of life's greatest pleasures to be the way that even the tiniest details of my life reveal the most fundamental, most important big-T Truths, and then bring them into sharp focus....I will leave you to the happy task of making your own metaphors now. Maybe some of you reading this, being far more expert and veteran in the gardening arts than I, find no real magic to this story of long-forgotten carrots. But for me, the bounty I dug up this morning holds significant hope, and joy, and the promise of what is still beautiful and sweet lying underneath what looks like a bleak and dreary landscape. I think I'll make a soup of it all today, and let the sweet warmth of it soothe my heart and steady my soul.