growth – Page 2 – sethlewis.ie

Seedlings Need The Weather (repost)

It’s the time of year when fresh green leaves are unfolding and Jessica is preparing trays of seedlings for our garden. A few years ago I wrote about what I learned from our seedlings, and I’ve been thinking a lot about those lessons recently, so I decided to repost this post for you today. If you look closely, you’ll see that God is constantly communicating many valuable truths to us through the world he made for us. That’s what my forthcoming book is about— “The Language of Rivers and Stars”.

There’s a small square of earth behind our house that belongs to us. Which is strange, because it was here a long time before we were and will be here a long time after we’re gone. But there’s a deed in an office somewhere that has our names on it, so the ground is ours. And with that ground comes the responsibility to care for it—a responsibility that didn’t come from an office, but from Heaven.

We do our best. And when I say “we”, I really mean my wife, Jessica. She’s the one who does most of the caring and tending and planting. I made the raised beds around the edges of the garden, but she’s the one that filled them with roses and blueberries, mint and strawberries, pineapple sage and climbing jasmine and passion flowers. This year, she brought home packets of seeds for dahlias, zinnias, and cornflowers as well, because she wants to have flowers to cut for our dinner table throughout the spring, summer, and autumn. She sowed the seeds in trays of compost and found the perfect spot inside our glass door where our seedlings could have ideal conditions: plenty of sun (by Irish standards), warmth inside the house, protection from cold and storms and slugs, and regular watering. We babied our little baby plants, and we were delighted to see them grow, and grow fast. In fact they grew so fast that their stems became long and thin and too weak to hold up their own new leaves. One by one me they began to fall over. What went wrong? How could our seedlings be so weak when we protected them from every difficulty and obstacle? What more could we do for them?

The Gardener

When we moved in to our house, the garden was undeveloped. It was a small patch of grass, with a shed. And those things are still there, but they’ve been joined now by a row of roses at the back, with jasmine and passion flowers growing against the wall. Blueberry bushes bloom on one side, with strawberries and grapes beside them. On the other side is an apple tree, a plum tree, and a collection of pots growing a collection of colourful flowers that Jessica cuts and gives away or brings inside for us to enjoy. This year, we’re expanding our window boxes to hold even more flowers. As I write today there are rows of seedlings on the back stoop, reaching up and acclimatising, being prepared for planting—because none of this growth happens overnight. We’ve lived here seven years now, and the progress has been slow. It is measured in months and seasons and years, not hours and days. It was my wife, Jessica, who saw what our undeveloped little plot could become and patiently worked over the years to bring that vision to life. As I go outside to look at the buds forming and opening this spring, I see the fruit of her careful attention and I rise up and bless her for bringing such abundance and beauty to our home.

Pruning (a poem)

Everything grows fast in the garden this time of year. The rose stems stretch themselves upward, then droop with the weight of their own blooms. The grape vine climbs the arbour, blindly grasping anything it can hold on to. The weeds come back, and come back again, from somewhere, everywhere, while the vines on the back wall grow in every direction at once. All of this growth is a beautiful, abundant gift, yet I know that if I leave it untended for too long, my garden will eventually become something else entirely. The strawberries will send runners into the grass, the grass will colonise the herb bed, the weeds will colonise the grass, and the roses will block the path with thorns. The longer I leave it alone, the harder I’ll have to work to reclaim it. And here, in the wild tendencies of my garden, I see a reflection of myself. That’s what this poem is about:

Tree House (a poem)

Tomorrow, my wife Jessica and I celebrate twenty years of marriage. Two decades sounds like a lot to me, but—doesn’t everyone say this?—it seems like it’s gone quickly. When we first got married, I wrote a poem for Jessica about how our love was in Spring, and I didn’t know what seasons would come, but with God’s help we would keep growing through them all. Twenty years—and many different seasons—later we’ve made our home in this growing love. That’s what this poem is about:

Slow Happiness

As I look out the window at the sunshine on my garden, I remember the many days that I saw the same view differently—when the glass was streaked with rain, when the ground was hard with frost, and the plants that are budding and growing so beautifully today were nothing but tiny seeds or bare sticks. It all changed so slowly, but it changed so much. And as good as it looks today, I know that there are even better things ahead—the apple blossoms will ripen into apples, the rose stems will bloom with their own unique colours and fill the air with their intoxicating aromas, there will be blueberries and strawberries and maybe this year we’ll finally get some grapes from the grape vine, now that it’s more established. It takes time, establishing. Our blueberry bushes give us a lot more now than they used to, and the apple tree is a little bigger every year. Life is like that, too, isn’t it?

Everything You Touch

I have a simple poem for you today, inspired by the beginnings of Spring that I’m starting to see around me:

Everything You Touch

Your hands
Flung stars
And stretched out space
Your fingertips
Shaped Earth and placed
A garden on
This small oasis
Bursting full of life

Two Powerful Skills You Already Have

Walking and eating are two of the most fundamentally basic human skills—the kind of things we learn in infancy. But I have found that walking and eating are also two of the most powerful contexts for experiencing human connection. What do we suggest when we want to see someone? More often than not, it involves eating at some point. Or walking. Or both.

Strong Trees Don’t Grow Overnight

A few weeks ago, I posted a poem about an oak tree. In the poem, and in my mind, oak trees are big, spreading trees with thick trunks and impressive reach. They are a picture of solid stability, untouched by passing storms. Which sounds nice, doesn’t it? With Ireland now entering another full lockdown for at least the next six weeks, the ability of oak trees to stand unshaken in a turbulent world is enviable. Right now things look awfully unsteady, from where I’m sitting.