Propagating Love

While my back yard is the average neighborhood variety, I have high respect for good soil, manure and the mystery of plant growth.  My little gardening efforts have taught me much about life over the years.  This summer I have greatly enjoyed a small dwarf variety patio container raspberry bush.  It is bright green, compact and cheery.  It generously produces for me the most beautiful plump flavorful berries.  Raspberries are Kaytlynn’s favorite so it gives me great delight in sharing them with her especially.  I was a bit daring and placed my special plant directly into the soil this year in my front yard, as I have been replacing slowly some of our older landscaping with edible treats.  To my delight, small little starts have shot up around the mother bush and I have been able to take root cuttings to propagate more containers.  I have planted strategic plants for future harvest in my back yard containers, shared several with friends and have mixed them in my flowering pots.  I love watching growth, some of which I have directly encouraged by where I placed the original plant and have watched for the little starts to replant, but mostly by nature taking it’s course.

I took advantage of a similar opportunity yesterday that I have been wanting to get my hands on now for some time.  I wish I knew it’s name, but it is a bulb that dies completely each winter and comes back with the most favorable to hummingbird red flowers.  I noticed that the plants were bunching up together and unable to thrive.  The skinny long stems topped with flowers were falling down around my mini water fountain and the humming birds were not able to feast because they were on the ground.  So, it was time, and we cut off all of the stems, dug up the bulbs, and behold, they had multiplied so much under the soil, they were completely crowding each other out.  Carefully, I sifted through the dirt, broke apart all of the bulbs and then put them in a bucket to be planted later.  I was amazed by the 10 years of growth that happened under the soil that could only be seen when they were dug up and taken out of the ground.

The nature of my heart can’t help but relate my plants propagating themselves to the efforts of friends who live life naturally filled with love.  On occasion, it is helpful to be strategic about our kindness and our efforts, to watch for special opportunities to be loving, just like watching where to plant raspberries for the best opportunity for new starts to branch out.  Sometimes it’s more about the soil, or in everyday life, the people we hang out with that foster the best in each other to bring out more love.  I also believe that sometimes we just grow where we are planted even when we can’t see the new bulbs that are multiplying under the ground.  I often think this is true with kids.  When we share love and tenderness and kindness with children, admiring their flowers, their beauty, eventually they spread and multiply on their own.  Sometimes we contribute with our strategies to help them and sometimes nature takes its course.  I believe the magic of nature is God’s way of giving us a little glimpse of himself, in our surroundings, in us and in loved shared by others around us.

I hope to always be a seed planter, a propagator of new life laced with love and an influencer for kindness even if my efforts are not realized until I am long gone from this place I call home.