Forsythia

Every time I drive down 213 toward Town Point Road, I think about the forsythia on the side of the road. They border the Lovett farm, and create a beautiful barrier when they are in bloom.

I did not begin to really pay much attention to plant life until after I graduated from college and got married. I can remember the first spring that I noticed forsythia. Their brilliant yellow flowers are awesome.

I remember thinking "how could I have never noticed these plants before?" Later that spring I saw my answer: after they bloom, they become rather mundane looking green bushes. Unless one is paying attention, they are rather unremarkable.

So I used to say that I like forsythia when they bloom, but otherwise I am not so fond of them.

The forsythia on 213 have changed my perspective. This long border of forsythia has been planted for 3 seasons now. When they were first planted there, they were all twiggy little plants spaced rather far apart. Now, there are stretches of big, lush, beautfiul bushes. But there are also interspersed stretches of scruffy little bushes that are almost no bigger than when they first arrived.

As the big forsythia bloomes, the scruffy twiggy ones looked dead.

But then it came time for the yellow blosoms to be replaced by green leaves. And those scruffy, twiggy, dead looking bushes now have green leaves on them. What a testimony to the power of life. What a statement about the clinging stubbornly to hope, even when it looks like death, in whatever form, has arrived.

To me, it is a resurrection story.