Sunday Meditation #7: On The Vibrance of Sweet Pea Vines

Saturday morning, September 10th, 2011.  Yard work.

Did not shower this morn before heading out to do yard work.  The promise of a warm day and hard work meant being dirty and sweaty before 10:00, a prophecy that came true.  High grass in the back yard, glazed with dew that turned my boots dark after a few steps.  Little droplets of cool silver fleck my ankles and calves.  The sensation brought back memories of summer mornings long ago, when I was a boy.  Those first few glorious minutes outside when the air was still just cool enough, with a hint of the heat to come.  There were birds, too.

This morning the birds were singing an alternating chorus, the warbles and trills rotating from bush to tree to bush to tree, ringing the backyard with a rotating flight of sound.  Bees among the hibiscus, I heard their low hum as I passed on my way to the shed.  Large bees, ravishing the snowy flowers in pursuit of pollen.  They seemed too large to be average honeybees, their fuzzy bodies dusted with the fruits of their labors.  The activity made me smile.

Toolshed.  Faint aroma of cool, wet wood.  I gathered up the saws and clippers I'd need, and the wheelbarrow.  The little chain saw purchased earlier in the spring rode in the wheelbarrow.  An electric battery-powered model, it isn't big or fierce, but suits my needs for now.  It was on the way back to the house that I saw the sweet pea vines twining in the fences at the corners.  They were bright, deep blue, little pools of indigo splashed on the aged silvery wood, blue eyes peeping from amongst the electric green leaves.  I stopped, and caught my breath.

Flowers graced my fences.  These things happen, and we explain by biology and cellular chemistry, of the cycles of growth and death and growth outlined in textbooks.  Our heads accept that flowers come from plants come from seeds come from soil come from weather and geological processes.  But none of those really matter, not when faced with such beauty and small graces.  This I know.  I went out to work in the sun and shade, and found my favorite color daubed on the fences I had taken for granted.  I was humbled and pleased.  That beauty exists, for us all, is the lesson I learned.