Beauty After Winter

I planted hope yesterday.

It’s fall…leaves are dying, the late blooms on the plant are looking dead and wilted, the windshields are frosty in the morning. A colleague commented that this was her favorite time of year. For me, it signals the long dark cold winter ahead…and the leaves crunching underfoot are a constant reminder that things are gonna get rough soon:

-cars that threaten not to start

-warming up vehicles, scraping windshields

-bundling up in multiple layers, hunching shoulders to brace from the cold.

-higher heating bills

-dark mornings, and early evenings.

…you get the picture

Yesterday though, after we pulls the annuals out, and trimmed the perennials down, tucking them into their beds for the winter, I planted hope. I was tired and wanted to be done. I don’t much know what I’m doing in the garden, and I was ready to be outta there—the garden isn’t a place where I’m particularly comfortable because my knowledge base is close to zero. No one likes to be in a place where their feelings of incompetence rise up full force.

I wanted to be done, but I stuck it out…and I planted hope. I can follow directions, and so I dug down to the required depth, and planted tulips. Beautiful, purple tulips. At least that what the picture on the bag says they will be one day. Yesterday, they looked like slighted pointed lumps. Hardly impressive. I’m stuck those bulbs in the ground, in faith, that they will survive the winter, and grow into beautiful plants come spring.

It’s hard to believe…planting something that looks so lifeless in the fall, before the long hard winter, will lead to growth in the spring. Seems almost cruel to put them out just when it’s gonna get really really cold. I have seen tulips come up other springs…and make it through the hard frosts and persist to bloom. You’re supposed to plant tulip bulbs in fall…it’s how they grow.

I like tulips. They are a courageous flower…they have “chutzpah”…that against all odds, they show up earlier than one might think possible, to satisfy our color starved eyes with bright bold flashes of color. They prevail, even sometimes poking through snow. They show up after adversity.

I like the idea that this winter, during the cold dark days, that those bulbs will only be a few feet outside my window. They are waiting for their time to bloom, and they will make it. They will survive the winter and show off their victory of having “made it” by splashing my garden with vivid purple. I can hardly wait. As I was planting them, I kept thinking about how knowing those bulbs were out there waiting for spring, was going to remind me that spring is coming during those short days, and long dark nights.

By now maybe you’ve figured out why this therapist likes tulips, right? How I value the hope that tulips signify, how the tulips remind me of the work our clients do, how they hang in during the really tough stuff, believing that spring is coming.

Spring always comes after winter. Beauty somehow emerges after the dark bleakness.