A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot

At the end of each school year all the beautiful art created by students; all the bright seasonal decorations, learning incentives and affirmations, are wistfully removed and the teacher and her students are left with a bare classroom; an austere contrast to the beauty and life it held earlier. 

I'm reminded of this ritual of my past as I nostalgically cut back the flowering perennials in my garden each fall. However, the act of saying farewell to the flowers is admittedly made more easy by their unattractive fall look. I've been busily removing sodden brown flowers, limp blackening leaves, and tall stalks bending heavily towards the soggy earth The clouds and breezes have now fully gathered, and the leaves on the trees are emptying at a steady rate, their final bright colors waving a cheery send-off for the darker winter months ahead.

 Having grown up in Oregon and living the last couple of decades in Washington, I've been privileged to enjoy "many" autumns in the northwest. In late August, on a particularly lovely day, I received a call from my mother who said she was making pork chops. I knew what she meant without saying another word. My mother had experienced perhaps a slight shiver, a cool breeze, observed a subtle difference of color in her maple tree's leaves, or perhaps just an intangible feeling that our brief summer season had come to a close. I said, "Are you sure Mom...already?" "Yes", she said with certainty, "I can feel it in my bones". Cooking pork chops and applesauce is my mother's way of acceptance of the close of summer and an open invitation for fall to come magically in with its paintbrush loaded full of intense passionate colors.  

The salmon streams near her home are now thick with spawning salmon, and the maple trees are making up for their lack of leaves by housing great numbers of crows resting with their wings tucked in tight, between their raucous raids. I'm planting alliums for the first time this fall, their big bulbs promising large purple-swaying globes of color in late spring.

Fall is already coming to an end, and the warmth of my family, friends, and the upcoming births of our first great-grandchild (and yes I married a man who has a few more"autumns" on me, and a previous family), plus a new grandchild, fill me with thankfulness and anticipation. The picture below is of my son and I this last weekend as he surprised me with a week-end visit from his home in San Diego.  We both share a love of nature and a walk through the forest to the beach brought our hearts closer as we foraged for the perfect shell, pebble or leaf and praised God for the blessings he has poured out so richly on us.

Psalm 108:4-5: For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.