Distracted by nature

The lure of nature’s beauty has way-laid my regular pattern

My day’s pattern has been altered by an intoxicatingly beautiful morning. Summer has come late to my part of the world; a week ago as I packed to leave for Boston it was in the 50s (here and there), but today it will soar into the low 80s. Unusually for me, I am rejoicing in the warm sun, the cloudy blue skies and the haze that is beginning to form.

My typical morning routine is to awaken early (without an alarm clock), get ready for the day, take Otis out for his morning constitutional, pick up one of my area sons at 6:30 for work, and then return home to pray and write my Substack, with a goal of its being published no later than 8:00 AM.

I knew the morning was starting in a fresh way as I sat down to tie my shoes before extracting Otis from his overnight habitat. After tying my shoes I stood up, turned around to unzip my furry friend from his carrier, only to see him looking me straight in the face, smiling in the way only a Shih-tzu/Maltese does when feeling victorious.

He has now learned how to move the zipper to find his own way out. I’m not sure whether I should be proud of his efforts or concerned about his future security, but for today I’m going to appreciate it as a sign that every morning does not, in fact, need to be rigorously the same.

I am still on vacation, so I have the ability to “massage” my schedule a bit. Instead of returning home after depositing my son at his workplace, I stopped by three stores with gardening supplies. Earlier in the season I purchased an elevated cedar garden box, and now that it’s finally warm enough for plants to be outside, I decided this morning is the time.

Quirky folk singer Arlo Guthrie captures the essence of my first-of-the-morning tasks today.

It’s funny how years have changed my perspective. As a child I loathed the gardens that my mother and my grandparents tended. I was never a willing participant, and only if conscripted with some sort of monetary bribe would I water or weed or otherwise find myself in the heat, the dirt and the swarming gnats that constituted my youthful definition of gardening. I wasn’t a big vegetable fan, appreciated flowers only from a distance, so there was absolutely nothing of interest to me in the garden.

Over time, however, I have returned to some of my roots, including a deeper appreciation for the natural world, and my part in it. I have found delight in feeding birds this past winter and spring, although most of my visitors have been rather drab and ordinary, but I guess even common creatures need food support.

While we lived in Minneapolis ten years ago I decided to plant a few vegetables in a backyard garden spot. It was an abject failure, partly because I lost interest, and partly because I found little joy in the bending and watering and weeding required. While in Virginia I received several seed catalogs in the mail, ordered a few packets of seeds, and seven years later, moved with the seed packets packed away, never having seen soil.

So I told myself last summer — having moved too late in the season to start any garden — that in 2026 I would finally make this happen. And so here I am, dirt under my fingernails (quite a feat for a preacher with “soft white hands” as one of my agrarian parishioners years ago commented in partial jest), sweat on my brow and a feeling of satisfaction that I have started a garden of sorts.

I love that it is a raised bed (only minimal bending and stretching, and it keeps the plants taller than the rabbits who are area co-residents), that it seats nicely on my small sunroom patio area, and that I can comfortably sit in my sun room, looking out the window to see the vegetables and flower grow, while nearby my bird friends peck at the suet and seed mixtures I have put out for them.

As I breathe in the possibilities of this new day and the (literal) grounding my small garden provide me, I am taken back to the earliest pages of Hebrew scripture, where the Creator, it is said, forms humankind from the dust of the earth. And then my mind wanders to the words of imposition on Ash Wednesday: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I am dust. One day I shall return to dust.

But for now, I’m simply going to rejoice that the soil I tend is a source of continuing life.