For May 10th:

“They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it’s leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”  

Jeremiah 17:8

It is a sunny, early spring day as I write these thoughts. Outside my kitchen window I gaze at my forsythia plant, which is in glorious full-bloom. This is the first year it has shown even a hint of the magnificence it would have had in my Mother’s garden. My Mother had a green thumb. Everything she touched that had roots thrived abundantly. She often shared clippings of her plants with me, which with her guidance I was able to just keep alive. But forsythia was her favorite. She had ten or twelve plants that bordered her driveway, and in the spring when they were in bloom her long driveway was like visiting the Biltmore Estate.

My forsythia plant came from her garden 6 or 7 years ago. We dug it up together from one of her plants. When it was first planted in my garden, it had only a couple of branches, twigs really. Each year after the little yellow blooms have fallen to the ground and are replaced by bright green leaves for the summer, I have pruned the plant with visions of it one day taking on the splendor of one of my Mother’s plants. Some people shape their forsythia plants into ball shapes, but my mother always let the long branches of her forsythia grow wild. She described them as “having the graceful arms of a ballerina as they moved with the breeze”. I always thought her’s were the most beautiful of any I had ever seen.

My mother passed away suddenly in 2008. It was springtime and her forsythia were in full-bloom. We used clippings from her plants to adorn the funeral home for the visitation. As friends and family gave us hugs and shared memories and tears, we were surrounded by her presence through the beautiful forsythia arrangements.

I miss her so much, especially as I mother my teenage daughter. But I experience her presence through memories, her nurturing of my own “roots” and knowing that she is helping God in His garden. This year my forsythia that she shared with me is in full bloom on her birthday, and I hope she is excited to see how beautiful it is this year. It doesn’t come close to the brilliance of her’s but it does have an abundance of flowing, graceful arms swaying in the spring breeze.

It is “ugly” that I cannot visit her here on earth anymore and walk through her garden with her, but I am so grateful to be able to enjoy the beauty of her memory through God’s eyes in my own garden and the forsythia plant she shared with me.

Jane Newman