Back from the dead

"If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water"

from T S Eliot, The Wasteland (1922)

When we first moved into our house on Indian Hill Boulevard, it had not been lived in for over a month. Despite the sprinkler system, many of the plants in the front and back yard had not been watered. And the plants had not received any rain; Fiona's earlier post already noted how the past year has been the driest on record, since the 1880s. I didn't even bothered about the plants that I thought were already dead. There were some, in the front yard, that were completely brown and dry. In the back yard, there were bushes that still clung on to life, but I paid a lot more attention to the plants that I had bought and planted myself -- the lavender, tomatoes, gardenias, geraniums and baby's breath -- or to the plants that I wanted to use and thus wanted to survive, like the rosemary and the lemon tree.

Over the past month, the plants have surprised me. Some that I bought are now long dead; they probably didn't even survive the shock of my amateurish transplantation. Some are clinging on to life, and others, like the geraniums and the tomatoes, appear to be thriving (for now).





















Some of the plants that I transplanted withered away quickly, but soon came back again. I have two baby's breaths in the front yard. One thrived right from the beginning, but the other died (or so I thought) within a few days. Its tiny, delicate flowers turned brown and all dried up into a small, pathetic patch of brown. But I kept watering it (it was just next to the surviving one anyway), and eventually, new branches and flowers emerged. Now, the earlier survivor is showing signs of decline, while the fighter has grown stronger. Its roots have taken hold, and I think it will survive and thrive.


But it is the plants that I had earlier given up on that have surprised me the most. Out in our front yard, there was a brown, dry little shrub that had been planted by the previous tenant. I didn't even know what it was. It was lifeless, shriveled up and ugly. I never watered it. But something must have happened as I was watering the other plants around it. A few weeks ago, I noticed a new branch coming out of it. A week later, a new flower -- I think it's a geranium, though I cannot be sure -- began budding. New branches have started growing, and I have resumed watering it, cheering it, rooting for it to grow strong once again.


A similar experience happened in the back yard. I had always paid more attention to the rose bushes there, since roses, in their haughty and prickly self-assurance, unfairly arrogate more attention. There were some other shrubs and bushes in the back yard, but these I did not tend to much. But a few days ago, I noticed a new flower coming up from some of these neglected bushes -- a lovely species of lily, I think. In a similar way, our lemon tree, which only had a few lemons when we first noticed it, has started to put out a lot more tiny, baby lemons and blossoms.

















Life clings on, survives, and even thrives, in unexpected and neglected places. These unexpected occasions of luminous grace have added a heightened dimension to the beauty around me. I want these flowers and plants to bloom and grow. I enjoy the colour they bring. But in a deeper way, I am grateful for the reminder they have served to me, of how surprising true life can be.


In the hardest and driest of soils, a plant can cling on, waiting only for the water from a distant rain or a clumsy gardener to struggle back to life, and not to some half-hearted attempt at life, but a full blossoming of what God intended its life to be. The flowers don't come half-formed; the lemons don't stay green, but ripen to their glorious buttery yellow.


And so it is in the serest and most arid landscape of all -- the broken human heart. One of the characters in Eugene O'Neill's play, The Great God Brown, declared: "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue." Perhaps it is not so much glue that we need, but water. Plants which I had given up as dead can struggle fully back to life, with just a little watering. Surely God's watering can accomplish even greater things in the dusty and bitter soil of a human heart. New life can spring from the unlikeliest of places. New fruit can emerge from the driest and dreariest of lives. And in the seasons when there is no water, only the sound of "dry grass singing", we can wait -- impatiently, thirstily, angrily, but always expectantly -- for the rain to come once again.