One could do worse than plant flowers

Today is supposed to be my writing day. 

Subjects have been interviewed, topics are prepared, and three articles are due ... but I'm sitting at my computer gloomscrolling instead.

I feel stuck.

And not just in my writing. But in everything. Helplessly stuck. You know?

 The apartment building across the street had a leak in the basement a few years ago. A cute little backhoe came and dug up the driveway, ruining the curb and a long strip of asphalt on one half of the front of the building.  

Repairs were made, the earth was replaced, but the curb and asphalt were never fixed.

The building isn't pretty - brick and square - but the front of it was always reasonably neat and not unpleasant. But for the past two years it has had an ugly 2-foot swath of dirt out front like a scar.

I feel like that with Covid. More than a year of adaptations to a life I was pretty happy with have been necessary, and functional, but ugly.  Scarringly ugly.

I want everything to go back to the way it was.  I want to have friends over and raise a glass and decimate a cheese board and hug hello and goodbye. I want to hang out with my closetalker friends and not step back an offensive mile.

I want the asphalt and the curb repaired.

Today I noticed that lumpy upturned patch of earth in front of the apartment building is growing daffodils and tulips. Last fall, maybe, someone got an idea in their heart and carefully tucked the seeds and bulbs into the dirt and let them unfold in their own time.

Beauty. 

Just now, my friend called. We're miles apart. Her call was like a breath of air. We can't hang out in person but we can still talk and share joy and carry each other's burdens. 

Her call planted a little flower in my Covid-broken heart.

I don't know how to plant and I don't know how to repair torn asphalt or rebuild a curb. I don't know what will grow out of all the upheaval and repairs we've had to make.

But I do know that God put us here to make gardens out of wilderness. To set our hands against entropy and craft, create, cultivate. We're made to be makers. To make beauty, to make life, to make wonder and function and comfort and nourishment.

And maybe someday a construction crew will pull in and set the apartment driveway right. It will be lovely.

But until then - 

one could do worse than plant flowers.