Tulips and Alliums?

Today it’s windy. Cold. And everything brown. Brown, dull, and bare, bare, bare.

But just last week Mike showed me that the bulbs I buried this fall—my first ones ever (planted with fingers crossed and no real conviction of future flowers, then promptly forgotten)—had actually pushed their way up and out of our dirt!

Incidentally, I had a botany professor who couldn’t abide the word “dirt” when it came to planting and growth. “Dirt,” he’d say, “is something you get under your fingernails. Things grow from soil.” (Though … I cannot think that what we have here can truly claim to be much beyond dirt. And yet? Tiny, stiff foliage is peeking out of the ground; unexpectedly determined to become a tulip or an allium!) Just how long have roots been extending downward and shoots been reaching upwards without my even knowing anything was happening beneath all that hard … dirt?

There is something about it for me. Hopeful. Angels going before. Things happening that I don't even see. The Lord at work in what seems ordinary. (Dirt! Not even soil!) And of course, I'm still not sure, (will they even survive the snails?), but it is possible; we might truly be on our way towards alliums and tulips! What a wonder.