If you’ve hung around the front porch long enough you know by now my sentimental attachment to the lilac. In this year without a spring it took them awhile to bloom, but they are out in full, fragrant, force now. All over town their lovely scent is wafting through the air.
Last night I took advantage of a break in our biblical rains to mow the lawn and was reminded yet again how quickly nature encroaches on our orderly little world. It seems like summers are spent beating back the attempts of mother earth to reclaim our little plot of land. The other 9 months of the year are spent hunkered inside our little fortresses against the weather’s attempts to kill us.
Am I just getting paranoid in my old age? Letting the dogs out the other morning they spooked a deer that was standing in the backyard, and she bounded off through the bushes, her white tail waving goodbye. The next day the same deer attacked our neighbors Boxer in their back yard and had to be beaten off of her by the neighbor. Add in the “extreme” weather lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that nature really is out to get us.
Then I wake up on a morning like this with the yard still wet from the previous night’s storm, and sunlight streaming through the trees, and think it’s all in my head. How could sweet nature, the giver of the bountiful lilacs outside the bedroom window possibly be trying to kill us? Sure she may be high maintenance, but isn’t it worth every little tantrum and demand of mother nature, just to look into her face on mornings like this?
Yes, nature is a woman. At turns stormy, and lovely, her fierce blue eyes penetrate our soul and demand the very best we have to give. We can spend a lifetime in her service and still come away thinking that we are the lucky ones.
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