February                                                                                                       2/23/2013

A couple of months ago my lovely husband spent an hour blowing leaves—hickory and oak, sweet gum and elm—into a large pile near the gazebo in our back yard.  I thanked him, and of course reminded him that the leaves would have to be bagged up soon or the minimal grass under the pile would suffer and die… Something about my husband (whom I adore): he loves to use his loud noisy leaf blower, but disdains the gathering of the collected leaves into a bag.  (He tells me that any man reading this will completely agree with this practice.)

So here I am at the end of February raking the now sodden pile of leaves and lifting them into the bag-lined trashcan so they can be put out with the garbage.  Here in Tallahassee we have many, many trees (one of the things we love most about the place) and far more leaves than we can ever use for mulch or bedding.  (Not everything likes the acidic nature of disintegrating leaves…)

The pile of leaves I’m working with this morning are compressed-- black, wet and cold-- and are mixed in with an incredible number of hickory nuts after our profuse harvest was brought down by winter winds.  As I scoop up double handfuls of leaves, sticks and nuts I see evidence of the various things that have been happening under the pile over the past few months.

Creepy crawlies scurry from the movement, looking for a quick new hideaway, and long healthy earthworms squiggle frantically as they drop onto the hard clay underneath my feet.  The grass that’s been covered by the pile has turned a pretty lemon yellow, but appears to be alive and welcoming the fresh air and sunlight.

I see tender white shoots emerging from thick hard hickory nut shells, something they would not have been able to do without the heavy leaf cover serving to soften the outer layer of the nut.  The earthworms were working hard to merge the leaf detritus with the clay soil—a very good thing.  Odd little holes appear in the dirt as I clear the leaves; God only knows what’s in them.

As I stuff the leaves into more than a dozen big yard trash bags, I ponder these revelations.  So much life happening around us of which we are not conscious!  So many levels of existence that don’t typically penetrate our daily thoughts—just like the unseen spiritual world that thrives right beside (and in) us at all times.  We move through our lives often without giving this shadow world credence or value, and yet it is the essence of life and death.

How much more will be revealed to us when we face our Creator—the Supreme Gardener and Tender of our Growth in His vine!  One of my favorite passages of scripture tells us: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  (1 Corinthians 13:12)

We shall know fully!  Things which we cannot possibly know now; things which might even hurt us to know, things that we couldn’t handle knowing now… when we are with Him we will be completely healed in body, mind and spirit, and we will be able to learn these things without pain or suffering.  We will finally understand the world around us—including other people—and we will be amazed beyond be-leaf :o)