Still Blooming

We all need good soil.

Look: trees don’t care. Don’t care about a calendar or holidays, or what folks name them. They bud and flourish and bear fruit and go dormant and wait and bud.

I know this.

But I also know that Lady’s limbs are dotted with green in a fresh way today. Barren branches yesterday. Today, growth.

Lady is the young oak in our backyard with a trunk that inexplicably curves out and then in again like a gentle belly. Two branches are adorned with bird feeders that the squirrels haven’t yet hacked. Even without feeders, Lady is beloved by many a cardinal, chickadee, titmouse, woodpecker, and squirrel. And by me.

Of course, the theologian in me sees the significance of trees running through the narrative of scripture: the Tree of Life; the root of Jesse; the blind men who saw men walking around as trees; the Vine and the branches; the cross of Calvary; the reprise of the trees of life in the new heaven and earth; not to mention all the family tree genealogies that link generations to each other and to God. God made trees both plentiful and special. (I think trees might be one of God’s favorites.)

Lady is blooming on March 1—the first day of Women’s History Month. The romantic in me (malnourished as she is) sees these burgeoning buds as a bouquet of acknowledgement. The tree’s buds offer a sign that we are here, no matter what weather should buffet (and wouldn’t you know it; March came in with wind, driving rain, and hail this morning).

The world has a way of flattening the miraculous into something common—look at how our society simultaneously venerates and ignores the fortitude of giving birth, for example. It is good to take time to stand up and remember that common and plentiful doesn’t mean unremarkable.