Unexpected Miracles

I’m just in from picking another small batch of surprise tomatoes, one of the gifts of our garden this year. My hands smell of the fresh fruit and they hold the promise of something yummy for supper this evening.

Every spring and early summer, plants begin to grow where I didn’t drop seeds. At least I didn’t plant them intentionally in the year they sprout. Sometimes they come up from seeds dropped the previous year from a bird or another source. Other times they arise from compost I buried. They grow to be healthy vibrant plants, sometimes more so than the new seeds I planted intentionally.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we go through life unknowingly planting seeds. When we follow our path and give our best to the world we might or might not see immediate results. For example, it’s easier for someone who is teaching a child to read to see quick results than for someone who is advising a young person about career choices to see the results of that advice. Those offers of help are often intentional, but all of us also plant seeds without thinking about what we’re doing.

This year in our garden, we harvested butternut squash that grew from old seeds. Beautiful, purple flowers that I don’t remember ever growing sprouted near where we had a tree cut down in the spring. Next to them came the tomatoes that have continued to produce fruit through the fall.

To me, they all feel like little miracles, ways that nature is showing me how life goes on, often unplanned.

I’ve seen something similar in the book events I’ve been doing for my debut novel, Rooted in Sunrise. I recently participated in the Kentucky Book Festival in Lexington. The first person to approach my table was a young woman.

“You probably don’t remember me,” she said.

“You look familiar but I can’t place you,” I admitted.

She went on to tell me that she had been in the afterschool writing group I facilitated at Garrard Middle School. In that group, she said, she learned to write differently than she had in classes where she completed English assignments within the required guidelines of the class. In our group, she learned she could use writing to express emotion. She still writes that way to this day.

That seed blossomed into a beautiful, expressive young woman.

I am the gardener and writer, the woman I’ve become, because of the many seeds people planted in me. Some were good, some were not. Life is about sorting those sprouts and learning which to dig up and which to tend. I am thankful for the opportunity to make those choices.

I’ll be thinking about that as I cut into those November tomatoes tonight.  And as the days get too cold for tomatoes to grow, I’ll keep my eyes opened for other shoots that are growing unexpectedly. There are miracles everywhere.