Growing up in Minnesota, I spent many hours in the autumn helping my mother in our family flower gardens. We would clear out the dead plants and prepare the soil for the flowers my mother had planned for the following spring. I remember one afternoon in early November when I was planting flower bulbs and thinking to myself, why are we putting these plants in the ground now, when the soil will be frozen for the next four months?
The following year in April when the snow finally melted, a bed of beautiful tulips and crocuses bloomed in the spot where the bulbs had been planted. I marveled at how life had carried on through a long period where it seemed that everything in that place had died and then resurfaced with such striking beauty. Life had not ceased in the garden. It simply took on another form. Today, recalling the understanding of the cycle of nature that I learned seeing those flowers bloom as a child, I can appreciate how conditions from the past bear fruit in the present.
Continue reading “Flowers that Bloom in the Springtime”