It was a long, harsh winter in my neck of the woods this year but winter’s frozen shackles have been thrown off and the abundance of springtime is bursting forth! Well perhaps in someone else’s garden… I have an abundance of winter’s wrath remaining behind.

A survey of my ¾ acre of paradise reveals that it is anything but! The 6-foot drift that melted from the side of my house revealed an impressive ice formation spewing forth from the main pipe of my underground sprinkler system – which despite being blown out managed to freeze. The whopping water bill I received as the ice thawed and the water began to run was just –  dare I say it-  the tip of the iceberg! Death has come to all 6 of my arborvitae; my Spirea have been beaten down to scraggly skeletons under the weight of feet of snow and those are the ones that survived; a young maple stands in naked shock, its’ trunk forever scarred by the blade of a city plow; my evergreens proved not be so ever – they too shocked into an unpleasant shade of brown.

Ah yes, the joys of my first spring as a homeowner! Having bought my home at the height of summer blooms last year, my only charge at the time was to get the grass green again. Having conquered that feat and attaining Goddess- of- Nature like status in the eyes of my neighbors in the process, I was unprepared for the overwhelm of maintenance that arrived on the wings of the first bluebirds of spring. My cozy and carefree 600 square foot nest that served as home for my first four years of naive seasonal bliss in NW Montana suddenly seemed very inviting again.

Alas, this season I have been a busy Goddess of Good Grief with plenty of work to do. There was the fence to finish, the lawn to get green again and mow and mow and mow, weeds to pull, weeds to pull, weeds to pull, pine needles to rake, evergreens to prune, pine trees to shape, Spirea to cry over, and 10 blighted boxwood shrubs to dig up – all with my trusty and oh so curious four-legged “helper” by my side. It was the future health and happiness of this little pup that I had in mind when I signed the mortgage papers on the largest yard in the neighborhood – not the hours and hours of yard work that would occupy every weekend.

But then my whirlwind of agrarian activity came to a screeching halt as a gust of gardening amateur’s defeat knocked me off my feet. What in the world was I doing?  I had no idea! Well, actually I know just enough to get myself into gardening no man’s land. Not knowing what half the stuff popping out of the ground was, was the first sign that I might be in over my head – was that a  wily weed or wistful wonder? Finding out I pulled the good stuff and left the bad stuff left me nonplussed – it looked like a weed to me!

Frustration began to creep into my cultivating celebration. Refusing to be outdone by boxwood roots that also refused to be out done I almost threw a temper tantrum. My childish impatience of wanting the manicured lawn, perfectly rounded shrubs, and gardens blooming with more than just dandelions and black medic – and wanting them now – threatened to rain on my sunny disposition.

Amid this springtime frenzy of activity,  I wonder at the circle and cycle of life. And as I spend these hours with hands in the soil or pushing the mower or trimming away the dead, I find myself in deep thought.

I feel a sense of excitement brewing inside of me – and a sense that I have been through this cycle of death and life before and I have – because I have lived it. While this winter was a hard one on my spirit, which longs for sunshine and dry mountain trails, it was nothing compared to the seasons of life I have endured of late. In the past two years, my life has been transformed and has looked and felt like my yard looks now. The deaths of my parents left me in shock; and while I went about living as best I could, I felt suffocated by guilt for being an absent daughter in their time of need and by the grief that comes with losing the two most important people in your life back to back.  But their deaths also motivated me to pursue my dreams, to finish well, and make them proud wherever life leads me.

To do this, I needed to tend to my inner landscape. Just as I called on an expert to help me identify the good and bad inhabitants of my yard and a friend to help dig up and dispose of my shrubs, I called in the help of others to see what in my life needed to be let go of, what needed to be pruned, and what held and holds promise.

As the seasons have passed, some of the the withered leaves of life I had clung to for purpose and security have begun to fall – providing a foundation for something new. The wintering of my soul revealed areas of my life that kept me frozen and alone and the bracing cold spurred me to reach for the opportunities that awaited me with change.

The tears that had for so long fallen into an abyss of sorrow now serve to water my well cultivated soul. Sprigs of hope are making their wonderful presence known. I can see growth where I pruned and I am rewarded with a heart that blossoms with laughter again. Tending one’s inner landscape is hard work. But if the promise of spring I am seeing in the garden of my life bears any likeness to what awaits the behemoth that is my yard, then all this sniveling and snorting I have been doing should be worthwhile.

For a few weak moments, I found myself slipping into the comfort of just leaving things as they were in my life and my yard – hoping they might come back in the rose-colored glory that I remembered them being – and replacing the shrubs I had torn out with more of the same. But my better angels prevailed. They said it was time for a transformation – for real change to come to fruition. For resurrection and new life.  Yes, it will take work and perseverance and more patience than I currently have, but the seeds of change have been planted, and I can’t wait to be like the Goddess of Nature again dancing in her little piece of paradise.

“Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.”  – Martin Luther