Spring Thoughts: "What Is It?"

Early one summer I spent a month pretty much sitting. Having experienced a challenging and exhausting couple of years, I was afforded time to decompress, reflect, and watch the world around me unfold.

Months earlier the Ash Wednesday service gave opportunity for attendees to plant seeds in small peat pots--a compassionate and perhaps quasi-evangelical consideration of dirt; that though the earth is our medium to which we will return, it's good dirt, fostering life and nourishment. After the service I planted all the leftover seeds in a large terra cotta pot and referred to it as my Manna* Garden. Over the spring and summer I watched the seeds sprout and lengthen alongside the zinnias and cosmos I had planted in pots on my deck. Nasturtiums, a variety of Black Eyed Susans, and sunflowers eventually revealed themselves.

At the same time chives, bluebells, parsley, oregano and day lilies began appearing in the beds bordering my house and growing with them a plant I didn't recognize but which reminded me of a weed I had once mistaken for a daisy. "The only difference between a flower and a weed is your opinion," a gardener friend told me when I asked if he knew what the plant was. I thanked him and took a picture of it to a local nursery for identification. They didn't know what it was either, but one of the workers asked me if I liked it. I rolled my eyes.

A few days later I spotted a little roadside stand selling perennials and stopped to look. There, along with coreopsis, snap dragons, coneflowers, foxgloves, and lupines was a plant labeled Sweet William, identical to the one growing in my flower bed that hadn't yet flowered. Imagine, I thought to myself; one of them finding its way to my garden!

Would it have been a tragedy for me to have pulled out my Sweet William, mistaking it for a weed? Maybe not. But how delightful to have had opportunity to know its name and what it needed! Knowing something well enough to name is what we do as we care for our small part of this planet.

Perhaps Manna Garden helped, reminding me-- even if subliminally-- that it's always better to investigate a little before yanking.
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Manna, food provided for Israel slaves after the exodus, is Hebrew for “what is it?” Each time the Israelites say the word manna, they essentially were asking “what is this? or "whatdayacallit"?