Speaking the truth to myself

What do you do when worries assail you? When the darkness seems to be winning over light and hope?

Yesterday was just such a day. There are plenty of real and imagined problems in this circle of quiet...some are today's concerns, some are tomorrow's possibilities, and I am not doing a great job of remembering what is true. Why is truth so hard to grasp?

So last night I ventured out to water the yard. I breathed in lavender and rosemary, surveyed bolted lettuce, picked (and ate) tomatoes from the vine, and planned for fall plantings. I wondered about fruitless bean vines and over-planted beds resulting in chaos. I walked under the towering sunflower, saw the rising moon in the sky, and watched the canopy overhead change from blue to periwinkle to black. Somewhere in the midst of the sprinkler's spray, the mosquito's buzzing and the slurping of tomato juice, I found a moment's peace and could remember these words of timeless comfort:

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28

Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.

The Lord's Prayer

The Truth doesn't take problems away; it didn't, in fact, help me sleep last night, but it is True. And truth matters.

Autumn rose

A walk around the yard

Ducks - the picture of Group Think

The path in the woods

The bounty of the garden

Late bloomers

In the shadows, behind one of our aging fences, there is a wisteria plant. And it is blooming. We waited ten years for two flowering strands, and those were welcomed with shouts of joy. This year? There are dozens!!

There are enough flowers that I can smell them when I am walking on the driveway in the evening, and I don't need a spy to find them from the garden below. They are in evident abundance, just waiting to be admired.

Late bloomers. It is easy to doubt them when they are leaf-covered sticks with no blooms. The previous owner of our house dug up and took her first two wisteria plants back to the nursery because they didn't bloom. She doubted her soil; she really doubted the plant itself. She warned us that it might be a dud. Well, for ten years we thought it was. Our quasi-neglect was, for once, the right course of action. We pruned. We wondered. We admired the greenery, and we longed for blooms, but we certainly didn't dig anything up.

What we have learned since is that wisteria from seed can take up to ten years to bloom. It wasn't the soil; it wasn't the pruning (or lack of it some years); it was in the very nature of the plant.

I have experience with other kinds of late-bloomers. Constant checking of the "branches" doth not make it bloom, that I have learned. It's not the "soil" or the "pruning" (or lack of it.) Sometimes it just takes longer.

And when it is a precious person, and they show their blossoms at just the right time, it is a be-a-u-ti-ful, extra-fragrant thing.