Weeding with my Father

 

        I’ve gotten tired of wiping my nose. Drips form on it and drop down into the leaves and dead plants I’m clearing from the garden. Small snowflakes melt into the brown earth that has been uncovered. Yellow and orange leaves sit in a pile along with the lifeless stalks of flowers, remnants of the beauty of the summer gone by.

        Memories of my father and me cleaning these very same beds filter through my mind. The numbness of my fingers recall the pains of years gone by.

        “Why do we have to do this, they will all just rot away during the winter!” I tended to look at things the easy way. Perhaps I still do. I never gave any thought to the beauty of a cleared garden, the potential or the future of this small plot of dirt sitting in my front yard. These were thoughts that I can only imagine were running through my father’s mind.

         He knew how plants grew. He knew about their cycles, when they would bloom and what was necessary for them to grow strong and produce the beauty they held inside. He knew what needed to be done to produce a splendid crop of flowers the next year. He also knew the importance of making our yard look nice, even when the flowers weren’t in bloom.

        I was in my teens with so many things I could be doing. I thought of these days toiling in the yard as work that would never produce anything I could benefit from. It was work and work alone! I had no cares about the yard or gardens. This was something my father did and he did it well. I never gave any thought to learning while I was pulling weeds or raking the yard along with him.

        He was older and a bit infirm after various health problems. Our ideas rarely matched, clashing against each other rather than meshing. I was busy reaching out to the future and I had no need to embrace the past. My horizons were right in front of me. I was a fool!

        Some things he told me stuck with me, such as even weeds can be beautiful but a lot of what he said went in one ear and out the other. He knew the Latin names of the flowers and shrubs that he had planted. When he explained these things to me, I just didn’t understand. His wisdom overwhelmed my young inexperienced mind without my even realizing what I was missing.

        When spring finally arrives after a long white winter and the small bits of fresh greenery start popping up in the woods and gardens, I can’t help but enjoy them. I look forward to the views of these little slips of green hiding in the dark brown of the winter. Every year, I search for the first signs of these bright green sprouts, with that beautiful shade of green which we won’t see until the next spring, they give me a sense that spring is approaching, the cycle is continuing, summer will soon be here!

        Our gardens and yard always looked nice. They were weeded and trimmed and when the flowers appeared, their colors blended with those surrounding them. This wasn’t just through chance, it was from planning. Planning by someone whose knowledge was never truly appreciated until after he was gone.

        There are so many things I don’t know about my father. Most I have learnt after he was gone. There are so many things I wish I had asked him, but the chance has long since passed. The things I know, I treasure, so often they pop up when I least expect them.

        Clipping away at the flower stalks, my fingers numb from the cold, I return to the years gone by and wish that they had been different. Those were beautiful days, the gardens were bright and colorful but now they have passed and I have only the stalks, the dried leaves and sticks, the mulch for what will make the gardens beautiful in my years to come.