Thought for an Easter Sunday

I was reminded today of something very important in the garden. On morning walks to the shore, I passed by an area and there seems to be a garden planting emerging. The area is a small circle bounded by flat rocks (everything in this place is bounded by flat rocks) approximately 4 feet across.

My immediate reaction was what a waste of time this was. The garden is several hundred feet from the house and the plants would, if you could see them, be a mere speck in the window.

But then I reconsidered and thought about the person who planted them here. It took some work and effort to haul the rocks from the shore to place them in a circle. The digging of the sod was a labour of love and planting these bulbs and perennials was a statement of hope for the future. This small bed likely took at least a day to dig and plant.

I could only begin to share in the hopes and dreams for this small garden and imagine what those might have been like for the person who planted this area.

This small, out of the way planting was a statement of this person's involvement with this place. It might not be as involved (or large) in a gardening sense as mine is but is has to be considered equally valuable. This was this person's way of connecting to this place, this bit of ground.

And that's the story here. Every person has their own way of connecting to the small bit of ground they occupy. The person who planted thses bulbs is no longer on this property and I may or may not find out about them. It's a bit of a mystery at the moment. And just as I'm here now when I'm gone from this garden, I'll leave something behind me to tell future gardeners that I too wrote a mystery story in my garden. They'll never fully understand how I connect to this place.

But large or small, they are both important to us as individuals.