My kitchen window looks out upon my deck, which is not one which would be seen in any reputable home or garden magazine. In the hot and humid Southern Virginia where we live, it takes a lot of work and a power washer, which has been broken so far this summer, to stay on top of the green and black–I-guess-it’s-mildew–that regularly creeps onto surfaces. Two grills—it’s anyone’s guess which one will work the Saturday you need it—hunker in one corner, and a green turtle sandbox entices the grandchildren outside when the weather is nice.
Two picnic tables, also needing the power washer to be fixed, are good places to sit to watch the children dig in the sand. We don’t often eat on them in the summer because, well, we live in hot and humid Southern Virginia. So do mosquitoes, anxious to feast on the flesh of those feasting at the tables.
A large elm tree spreads its branches over most of the deck, shedding its tiny turned-yellow leaves in the autumn and bowing down under the weight of our occasional snow storms in the winter. In the summer, the elm stops the sun from coming in the kitchen window and shades all but one corner of the deck. Little blue-tailed lizards love to sun themselves in the corner, while entertaining the cat on alert on the other side of the sliding glass door.
Over the years, I have gathered flowerpots of all different sizes and shapes and filled them with seeds and flowers to brighten the deck and attract the butterflies to feed. Unless the weather gets temperamental, I can usually have bright, colorful flowers until November.
Standing at my sink, which I do a lot, I can look out on the deck and think deep thoughts about the changing of the seasons, the creeping years of my life and the way in which Heavenly Father may watch over His creation.
The other day I imagined my deck was a world full of His children and He, like me at the sink, tended them lovingly, always aware of their needs.
At the start of the season, I place each pot of flowers in exactly the best spot for them to grow beautifully. In the sunny corner go the vincas, the petunias and the purple plant with the little white flower that I don’t know the name of but kept alive all winter. The same pot is saved each year for the mandevilla whose flower looks so delicate and fragile, but is surprisingly hardy. The sun can beat down on it relentlessly as it has done during this current heat wave, but it still reaches its tendrils out to wind around the railing.
Several pots of impatiens fill the side of the deck under the elm tree. They grow happily and abundantly in the shade. Sometimes I worry because it seems to take them so long to get started, but once they do, they bloom and grow for weeks or even months.
Then there was my flowerpot full of some interesting weed that seems to grow everywhere. I recognize it as a weed, even though I don’t know its name, because it grows faster than any other plant and crops up wherever there is even a tiny spot of soil. I watched it grow in the pot for several weeks among my real flowers, then it seemed to jump pots and sprout up everywhere.
When it seemed to threaten the growth of the others, I left my observation post in the kitchen and pulled it up from all the littler flower pots. I pulled up the whole mass of it with the ball of soil still clinging to its roots and put it on the far side of the yard just inside the woods where it couldn’t hurt my flowers anymore.
Most of the time, given the right amount of sunshine and sufficient moisture, my plants grow on their own. At times, though, I see from my window one of my flowers really struggling and rush to its rescue.
That was the case the other day when evidently my husband, watering with the hose, had missed one of the planters of impatiens sitting on the railing. While the others tossed their happy heads up to the sky, this one collection of plants was withering under the 100-degrees-plus temperatures.
I quickly finished what I was doing in the kitchen and rushed to its aid, filling the planter with cool water from the hose until it overflowed. I watered until I was sure it had enough water for that day and more than enough for the next.
By the next day, it had recovered and was on its way to growing and blooming again.
My nicest surprise this summer was a miniature rose bush that had bloomed all last summer, survived the winter and popped up unimpressively in the spring. The weeds grew bigger than it did, and I saw no blooms on it at all, so I pulled the weeds occasionally and stuck the pot back behind the bigger, more cooperative flowers.
Lo and behold, when I was watering one day, I noticed a splash of red and pulled the pot out. A miniature rose, perfect in its beauty, had bloomed. The plant had done its job and fulfilled the measure of its creation with little fanfare or attention. I pulled the plant to the front and enjoyed its delicate flower for several days.
Now I don’t begin to believe that the story of my deck is a perfect allegory and each flower equates to a different type of person or need. But when I wonder sometimes where God is in my life and how far away He is when I need Him, it brings me comfort to remember how carefully I watch over my plants, allowing them to “bring to pass” much beauty as they use my gifts of water and fertilizer, yet rushing in to pull the weeds, or move to a different location, or watering with an abundance of cool sustenance when they are perishing.
If I can care for my plants, which will be gone with the first frost, how tenderly my Heavenly Father must watch over and care for me, one of His own, eternal children.
Susan Elzey is a freelance writer based in Danville, Va., mother of seven, stepmother of two and, at last count, grandmother of 14.
