The Preacher and I have just returned to Hope House after a two week road-trip, sandwiching visits to family and friends between speaking engagements.Things changed in our absence.
The forest of maples in our side yard had no foliage when we left. They've birthed both leaves and seed-clusters since. Our rhubarb had barely broken ground, tiny ruby-red knobs surrounded by emerging leaves, pleated as exquisitely and compactly as French-smocked silk. Now the stuff is tall. Pie-ready, though I'll not be the baker. I prefer my rhubarb stewed with strawberries.
Along with pigweed, chickweed and anonymous weed, the backyard has sprouted a healthy crop of dandelions, bright enough to justify sunglasses. That king of weeds hadn't even begun showing their yellow manes two weeks ago. Now they've passed the salad days and progressed to the wine-making-stage.
I won't be doing that either. I will, though, pluck a few and arrange them in a tiny vase, wishing, as I always have, that people didn't hate them so.
Crayola-coloured tulips wave like flags atop Hope Mountain. (Our grandbeans, one of whom helped me plant their bulbs, so dubbed the tiny hill at the bottom of the yard.) All winter I imagined the life below its snow-covered slopes, hoping and waiting for warmth and moisture to wake their happy hues.
My, irascible, irresistible BC friend of three decades would enjoy those tulips, I think, smiling at their flamboyance. Gardening has long entwined itself with Margaret's joie de vivre. And they remind me of her.
I received a letter from Margaret a few weeks ago. "This year will be the first in many that I won't be gardening," she wrote. She wanted to go outside and enjoy spring, but had too much work indoors. She'd be moving house soon. "I now have the monumental job of closing No. 76 down. What a task!"
We'd barely begun our trip when Margaret's son, John, contacted me. His mother was gravely ill, he said, his words slow and measured. "If you'd like, I can give her a message from you."
What to say? Shocked, I blurted, "Please pass on our deepest prayers and love. She's one of the best friends I've ever had - and I fully expect to have tea with her again one day."
But Margaret's spirit fled her beleaguered little body the next evening. If her new home has gardens, I expect she's planting pansies in God's old boots this very moment.
I'll miss Margaret sorely. Though I believe we'll have that cup of tea yet (if heaven has such), thirty years of friendship on earth doesn't easily dissolve.
Yes, things changed during our absence. Spring rushed in.And Margaret rushed out.But she left something in the lives of those who loved her, my irreplaceable Scottish friend. Like the seeds God used to bring Hope House back to life after winter, the seeds Margaret planted in others' lives have spread like dandelions. Life-seeds always do. God arranged it thus.
Seed wisely. And seed liberally.
