Resilience. The Latin source of this English word means “to jump back, or to rebound.” Among the features of our “yarden” are some antique as well as newer containers. The antiques include some heavy concrete planters that belong to my grandparents. Others are large concrete planters that we have collected over the years. One set of those are by our front door. They host a variety of plants over the year, depending on the season and what the recent weather has done to them. Recently, after planting some new things in them for the Fall, I walked out of the front door one morning, and, glancing down, saw what I thought was an orange candy wrapper on the porch. When I looked more closely, I couldn’t believe my eyes. 
It was no candy wrapper at all. It was a tiny Portulaca plant growing from seed out of the concrete of our front porch! We had had Portulaca growing in that container 1 or 2 years ago! Clearly, the seed pods had burst open and scattered the seed–as they do. The seeds are tiny. That porch had been swept and washed numerous times since the plants were living in that container. Yet, here was one of those seeds. Not only had it found a tiny spot in the concrete to germinate, but it rooted, took hold, grew a plant body and bloomed!
This is the resilience that comes with The Garden. This is Mother Nature, the Goddess, Gaia herself and her Life-Force at work in the tiniest, simplest, even thinnest of circumstances showing up and making life happen. This is the kind of resilience that makes me want to examine those places, times, situations, relationships where I think there is no hope left. Sometimes, there simply isn’t hope. Sometimes, it’s time to let go. But what if in a situation there is just a little crack, a little nurture, a little room for hope, for life to take root? This little flower makes me want to look more carefully and consider the unseen possibilities that are, apparently, just normal miracles in The Garden.
Bob Patrick
