In the mornings as I go for a walk, I survey our garden. I enjoy disovering what has happened, sometimes even overnight: the joy of finding new flowers and fruit. My favorite plant to admire right now is a dahlia. It sprung up out of a dry patch of dirt in the corner of our lot, and is now as tall as my two year old.
This spring, Abigail, Elisabeth and I would sometimes shop at the island Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings while Ted and Michaela were at gymnastics class. One morning in May, in the Persephone Farm booth, a “grab bag” assortment of dahlia tubers caught my eye. All kinds of flowers, a mix of mysterious roots, sat in a basket and at a price of 3 for a dollar, I felt it would be economical entertainment, a bargain for the beauty. We even returned twice, to buy more of the intriguing tubers.
At home Abigail and I dug holes around the garden and buried the dahlias. I love tubers and bulbs: such a wonder to plant something that looks lifeless, and then to wait and watch it grow up from the ground, green plant poking through dry dirt, a miracle emerging. A reminder of resurrection, an Easter illustration, a picture of the power and beauty that awaits us and the world – certainly face to face, in eternity – but in every day, as we go from glory to glory.
I have grown dahlias in the past, just a couple different ones, but I always knew which kind I had planted. So these mysterious tubers have particulary captured my curiousity. I have no idea what height or color they will be, or what shape the flowers. Dahlias to me look like fireworks: intense and spiky, a constant celebration of summer, explosions you can hold in your hand.
Each morning now I walk past my dahlia and wonder. The tallest and most mature one, the plant stands almost three feet high with many flower buds at the top, the petals still tightly closed, like little fingers in little fists. And I wonder, what will happen when the buds open? What will it be when it blooms? What mystery will I see? What is yet to be revealed?
1 response so far ↓
1 Patricia A. Taylor // Jul 28, 2003 at 1:03 pm
I bought two white baskets, on sale. within, I was told, were bulbs for calla lilies (one of my favorite plants), soil and instructions. As promised, tall green stalks are coming up through the soil now and I am anticipating flowers one day. Bulbs are amazing…so ugly and dry when I first saw them, and now the fulfullment on its way, just coming from sun and water. God’s Word and prayer are our sun and water.