I watched with disbelief as my friend Sherrie took a four pack of petunias from the bed of her pick-up truck. She held out the palm of her left hand, and with her right she upended the flowers, squeezing the thin black plastic holding the roots, and dropping the blossom side of the flowers into her other hand. She tossed the flowers onto divots she had dug in the freshly turned dirt of her flower beds. Within minutes she had emptied one of sixteen full flats. When she had filled one of her flower beds like this, she knelt to set the roots in the dirt. I noticed right away that her methods seemed brutal. She worked with wicked speed. I watched her rip the very bottoms of the roots away, disrupting the peaceful root ball of each flower, then she plunked each one down into the hole. Her two hands scooped the loose dirt over the roots as she leaned in, pressing the dirt around the stem. Then, as if that whole cruel process were not enough, she pinched the lovely blossoms off the top.
I, on the other hand, thought I would be more gentle with the single flat I bought for the narrow flower bed in our front yard. I dug tight little holes and gently lifted each flower from its plug tray, placed it in the hole and trickled some fresh potting soil on top, not disturbing the roots or the lovely blooming flower heads. Mine looked great right after I planted them.
Two months later Sherrie’s flower beds looked like fairies had sprinkled magic dust over them. Pink and white blooms cascaded like waterfalls. Mine looked like little green spindly vines with one or two blossoms each. It was pitiful.
I’ve learned a bit since then.
What I thought was plant brutality began with what is called teasing the roots. The nice full starter plants purchased at the nursery have generally, by the time we buy them, sent down too many roots for the tad of dirt provided in their little growing packs. The roots intertwine, knotting themselves into themselves. Leave them like that and it will choke itself to death.
What I thought was flora cruelty, pinching off the blooms, is actually doing the plant a favor. The nourishment and energy needed to keep that blossom looking pretty can instead be used to send up new healthy shoots, with more flower heads.
This is not new news. They’ve been telling us, in ancient writings all the way back to Adam, that we need to prune and graft and nourish and plow under. Lots of plant analogies are found in scripture and philosophy.
A few days ago, I planted the pansies I had bought out at J and J Nursery, before this pandemic reared its head. They’ve been sitting in their plastic flats for two weeks, out by the swing set. Because I have planters with nice loose topsoil in them, they would be super easy to plant. I just put it off, for no good reason whatsoever. I’ve done this so many times I’ve had to replace whole flats that have withered in the waiting. Sheesh!
Anyway, as I was teasing the roots on those pansies, before I set them in the soil, I got to thinking about God. He often enters my thoughts when I’m planting. I think He’s in his element there. I’m wondering if we, his children, have become a little root bound lately. We are happy in our tidy little plant plugs, where we were born and nourished daily and watered with regularity in a nice sunny greenhouse. I’m wondering if he said it was time to tease us and get us ready to really grow. Between pandemics and earthquakes and schools closing and businesses closing and economies crashing and people going stir crazy not being able to get near each other, it sure does feel like maybe the universe or God or whatever powers may be are teasing us!
I’m serious. I think, if I encourage myself to see what we are going through as a ripping of our roots, so we can refocus our energies; and a pinching of our blooms, requiring us to double our strength, then I will surrender and let it happen. The surrender opens the virtual capillaries and allows the growth to work to our own good. I can’t make anyone else see it that way. But I can choose to see it that way.
The thought brings a strange sense of calm. Like… this is supposed to hurt! It is not supposed to be easy! It is hard. And we can handle hard. In effect, we are modern day pioneers and this rocky precipice we are crossing will take some effort and some sacrifice and some faith.
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| Welcome back, our Christian Soldiers: Elder Shill, Elder Davis and Elder Yerman the Younger. (Elder Yerman the Elder comes home tomorrow.) |
Today we "gathered" in our familial clusters, six feet apart from each other, outside of our church. We cheered as the first wave of a sweet young devoted army of missionaries came home from their missions in Brazil and Thailand. More will follow, from Honduras and Chile and Arizona. These are the kids we taught in Primary not long ago. They are devoted, righteous, hard-working and pure hearted souls who had set aside this portion of their lives to pay an emotional, physical and spiritual tithe to their Lord. Ten percent of their lives so far. And they were happy doing it. But now they are called to let go, like they let go of the familiar to serve in the first place. Bless their tender young hearts! They came home by chartered planes from their far-off places, to the safety of their mothers’ arms and their fathers’ shelter while this disease spreads its tentacles worldwide. Full battalions marching home together. They will quarantine in their rooms for 14 days. I cannot imagine! Prayers for their emotional, physical and spiritual well-being!
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| Elder Shill enjoys his first home cooked meal. |
For whatever reason God has decided to tease our roots, I have to believe He knows what he is doing. So, while it may pinch, and it doesn’t look so pretty right now, and all we can really see is a big ole painful mess of dirt, I trust in the end He knows how to make us bloom.
