As Though a Drink of Grace

It feels like grace. 

I can't say I really mind the discipline of irrigation.  To be sure, I lament the extra use of water, and I can always find some other way to use my time.  It is laborious and a little bit physical.  But that word is appropriate:  it is a discipline, this process of finessing the hose around the garden so as to avoid growing stems while insuring each active trench receives some kind of drink.  The ritual of daily attention is instructive to me -- settling, grounding with a mindless yet evocative tedium, reminding me in the spraying that life is interconnected.  Every growing, living thing needs regularized nourishment and care, not just episodically, parsimoniously and begrudgingly delivered.   I, myself for example, don't go long between hugs, drinks, forkfuls and encouragements before I turn cranky and begin to wilt.  The beans and tomatoes and peppers and all deserve and depend upon no less.

And so for the past week, since nestling in the last of the seeds and the tomato transplants, I have contributed my manual substitution for the rain.  It has been dry here.  The lawn, in the barer places, is cracked, and the flowers lean despite my contributions.  The garden -- that beneficiary of so much imagination, preparation, perspiration and expectation -- silently whimpers.  Daily, then, the hose and the spray and the careful protection of emerging stems. 

And then last evening, fittingly around dinner time, the sky released some of its own.  It wasn't a torrent cannonaded on stormy winds; rather it came as a gentle and blessing shower -- a quarter-inch if my rain gauge is to be believed.  That gift was followed this morning by a sequel.  It wasn't, I suppose, all that much; but it was enough.  And more is predicted through the weekend. 

Grace upon grace. 

It's nice, of course, to have a break.  The water at my disposal can remain in the hose, and the rain barrels can be usefully replenished.  But mostly it is nourishing to be reminded that the garden has an advocate and resources larger and deeper than me. 

Grace, indeed.