My favorite thing to do in the spring is to bury my hands beneath the dirt, breaking up the dried clumps left over from winter, pulling out roots from last year, preparing the soil for a new crop. I lined my entry steps with pots before my landlord allowed me a space in the backyard to plant a garden. I kept the pots for flowers and herbs whose growth I mark daily as I enter and exit my home. I left most of the pots out during the harsh winter. My oregano had turned to hard gray strands with frozen crisp gray leaves. The buds of the rose bush were dried and brown. Several pots were completely empty. As the warm weather finally found its way to Massachusetts today, I decided to uproot the old, decaying plants, turn over the soil, and cover new seeds with moist topsoil. Now, as I exit and enter my apartment I will look for the first shoots of green poking through the soil rather than looking disappointingly at last year's lifeless leaves. It's time to invite vitality and growth into my life and to eliminate all that is stagnant and lifeless.
A day after I posted the above I came home to find a perfect pink blossom had sprung forth from my strawberry plant. Yesterday, I carefully clipped away the dead and decaying leaves and roots from last year, to allow space for the green leaves that had already started to spread. Eliminating the lifeless clutter from around the new shoots allowed the bloom to burst forth toward the sun. Let this be a metaphor for my own life: freeing myself of the clutter that surrounds me so that I may grow freely into the future.
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