The hummingbird garden – I remember when Kevin announced it one day. I am going to plant a HUMMINGBIRD GARDEN ! He was so excited about it. It came out of the blue; it came out of a surge of hope because we’d started our new business and he was hopeful about things changing, money was coming in, we were going to have more freedom to do the things we wanted – like planting hummingbird gardens ! He moved back the fence and chipped back the flagstones, making a nice little narrow planting area where there was none before – something from nothing, did research on the Internet about the kind of plants hummingbirds preferred, which would do best in the sun exposure there, or lack of it. I remember the whole process and how I just saw him so excited about it, reading his hummingbird book and looking at different plants. I’d never seen him so excited over something that he just dreamed up – something creative and new and something that he could spend time on and not have to go off to work for someone else. My heart was full of joy thinking how our lives were going to change, had already started to change, due to the new hope that had come to us. Hope that had been waning since the economy had shifted and we’d both been affected. This was all his.
I sat here this morning after a night of rain, looking out into our yard, not really focusing on anything, just staring into the half-light of morning – and I saw it! Right there in my line of vision – a hummingbird ! First he went to the orange-red flowers, one by one, and then to the yellow – the flowers Kevin had so carefully researched and purchased, planted and tended. I heard him in my heart saying, why don’t they come to my hummingbird garden? And I would console him and tell him that they are here in our yard, you can hear them in the mornings almost every day – up in the redwoods. But today, there he was, savoring the big wet red and yellow flowers, one by one, as they hung there like miniature Chinese lanterns, ornamental beacons for him to see, and I was the one who got to see it. I know that small dreams come true and they can turn into the biggest of dreams. With faith and love, tending and belief. I am proud of my gardener and of what he saw . . . and what he created. A special place for the tiny creatures where once there was none.
The post A Garden of Hope first appeared on Carrie Pepper.