Last Sunday, I was weeding along my backyard fence and discovered two pumpkin vines! (That is a sentence that deserves an exclamation point.) Initially, I thought they were squash plants. After I ran inside to tell my wife, she remembered our daughter planting seeds after we had carved our Jack-o-lantern last Halloween. If I noticed at all, I likely smiled at her effort, but I frequently lack the faith of a child that beautiful things grow from small efforts.
Other than my daughter’s planting, the seeds received no attention from us. Granted, I’m no gardener. I’d rather do something else (okay, almost anything else). My unenthusiastic yard care allowed them to grow. A diligent weeder might have ripped them up by mistake. Certainly, chemicals would have killed them. But I don’t spray weeds, and I like to keep the clover for the bunnies and the dandelion flowers for the bees. And as I’ve already admitted, I focus my energy elsewhere (like writing about the yard rather than working in it). Perhaps my benign neglect could actually be a kind of hospitality. Life just needs a little opening; look at the cracks in the sidewalk.
One of my favorite writers is Wendell Berry: “I see that the life of this place is always emerging beyond expectation or prediction or typicality, that it is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated.” Berry inspires me to give attention, even if I don’t follow his labors at farming or gardening.
Now that I discovered them, I check on the pumpkin vines several times a day. The broad leaves look green and healthy. There are several bright orange blossoms, which, even if they yield no pumpkins, are gifts. We can destroy life, but we cannot make it. Miracles are unearned.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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