Tilling up Holy Ground

It was evening on one of those absolutely beautiful days when I just needed to be outside. Needed to soak up the last rays on sunlight as they slanted strong and glimmering into our backyard. Hank and I started a garden at our little rent house because, certainly we want fresh veggies knowing we helped produce them, but also because being outside reminds us to simply breathe.

  Tilling the soil and getting rich, brown dirt under my fingernails reminds me where I came from. Not in a dust to dust sort of way, but back to my roots (pun intended!). Back to that house on the hill in the Texas Hill Country where my Opa came and taught us how to plant a garden when I was a youngster. Back to the sight of his work and time worn hands digging deep with a chunk of potatoes, eyes growing out everywhere, to show us the magic in planting.

  Opa was a home builder but a farmer first and he never forgot the magic of the harvest, how it teaches you to wait, toiling with the hope that one day you will put the most delicious tomatoes off the vine and feed it to all your family with some left over. It was just another way he loved and lived, planting seeds and waiting eversopatiently as they sprouted and bore fruit.

  He sowed seeds in his family too. Wisdom seeds given as he wrote commonsense truths on the little notepad in his pocket. Sharing how he had observed and learned and communicating it with the wisdom of the sage that we was. He was a farmer, a teacher, a good man in the truest sense of the phrase. His word was always good and he was known to give generously with a near loathing for any praise or thanks. He worked hard, quietly, with no complaining.

His blood flows in my veins and so it is not surprise that I find the truest peace just walking outside and staring at the trees and how they stand out stark against the early morning sky, or the beauty of a water tower when the soft light of dusk hits it at the right angle. Or the way that I get giddy watching seedlings grow and mature in the little garden we have.

   Oh it is good to have such roots.