Our yard is filled with mud. Not the good kind, where kids slosh and laugh and mom looks the other way because it is spring in Maine. It is the boot swallowing, productivity-inhibiting, slough of despond-ish kind. I have been tempted, several times to “deal with it” by staying inside and waiting for the warmth to dry it up. But that would be a mistake. God made this mud, filled with fallen acorns and misshapen rocks, teaming with microscopic organisms that by his mercy, are (mostly) too small for the naked eye to behold.
What a loss it would be to turn our backs on the ingredients of the very earth that we tend so keenly in gardens and landscape. My wood stove ash-bucket fits so nicely in one of its craters while it cools, making a perfect protection from fire danger. I can almost forget that it is snowing, since this mud sops it up the moment it lands. Nothing is without purpose, and everything God made is good.
We are in the planning stages of our garden, and it is a blessing that we cannot go out quite yet to get started. We have school to finish and grass to plant, and choir parts to practice. It is a buffer between the winding down of academia and the winding up of summer. I now go out unperturbed, boots on, and at shockingly youthful speed over its surface to avoid being sucked in. It is the literal spring in my step.