I got back from Collier's Nursery last night at 6:30 - an hour after closing. I was basically on my feet for over 8 hours (with about a 10 minute lunch break because we were so busy), when I pulled away from the nursery. Yesterday, I even took two pairs of shoes - my good hiking boots and my high-end running shoes so that I could make it through the day. By about 2PM, my feet were hurting, and even the shoe switch didn't really help. When I got home, I was hobbling and tired. We were hoping to go to dance lessons at 7:30, but there was no way these feet were going to do that!
I only mention the pain because it is so juxtaposed to my overall response to the day. For the last 24 hours, when my thoughts wander, they constantly float back to the beauty of yesterday. I cannot describe the impact those flowers have on my soul. When I see people loading up their little green wagons with very personalized selections of Verbena, Lantana, Vinca and Sweet Potato Vine, I gaze in wonder at their garden-in-the-making. It is awe-inspiring to see the variety of combinations that capture someone's heart.
Besides the unique combinations that each visitor creates, there are mixed pots that are filled with wonderful combinations of plants and color. There was one potted arrangement, which I found particularly delightful. It was a brilliant combination of red, trailing Petunias, purple and white Verbena and coral Million Bells, Ivy Geraniums and Purple Fountain Grass. Brilliant, bold and happy!
I also love the customers. Every one has different needs, different preferences, different styles of shopping. I was able to help a Demopolis woman select a Savannah Holly for her large container, and assisted a young husband in deciding how many yellow Knock Out Roses he would need along his walk. Another woman needed help picking out deer and rodent-resistant flowers to replace Peter Rabbit's delicious dinner the night before.
My favorite part is to watch the customer's faces as they get out of their cars and walk into the beauty. A wonderful expression comes over their faces. They start to gaze at the flowers and smell the fragrances and they can't seem to get enough. One father spent two hours there, wandering through with his 8-year old daughter, and picking out perennial plants for their garden. A homeschooling mom brought her children in to select the banana peppers and watermelon plants for the family organic garden. A trio of 70-something women came in looking for the bedding plants to place in the beds in front of their townhomes. I love to be with the people who, like me, don't want to leave.
When I am at the nursery around all that beauty, I am both filled, and full of longing. I experience joy, but also longing. It reminds me so much of a particular passage I love in C.S Lewis' The Weight of Glory.
... We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bath in it, to become part of it. That is why we have goddesses and nymphs and elves - that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves the beauty, grace and power of which Nature is the image...We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in!
I know what he is talking about in my soul. I need, at a very essential level, to be around nature, among the trees, hearing the the owls calling one another at dusk, listening to the pack of coyotes yipping with their eerie howls, needing to eat dinner on the screened porch after a long day at the nursery - even if it is 65 degrees. (And, on a more eccentric note, this probably explains why I have a special affinity for flower fairies!)
DOING THE ESSENTIAL THINGS
Another interesting side of being at Colliers is that I see many friends I haven't seen for years. I always know when I saw them last by the questions they ask me. "Are you still at Samford?" "Are you still doing counseling?" "Are you still teaching your workshop?" ("No", "No" and "No") We end up chatting about whatever season I was in when we last talked, and I imagine they wonder what I am doing at Collier's - moving flats of flowers, dead-heading the Gerbera Daisies and restocking the herbs. Sometimes, if I am too self-conscious, I wonder, too. But, then, I think about that potted arrangement of red, purple and coral. I think about how my soul feels around all that beauty. I think about the unique way I am able to come alongside people as we share that beauty together, and as I am allowed to help them take some of that shared beauty both into their souls and into their homes. I think about the deep satisfaction I get from being around the infinite variety of God's creation and his creatures, and I know exactly why I asked Jimmy if I could work for a few weeks.
So, as I hit Day 90 in my countdown to 60, I have discovered one irrefutable truth about me -
I need to be among the flowers (and my feet are just going to have to adjust!)
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