I did not grow up on a farm or in a farming community, and I didn’t plan on marrying a farmer, but then, you know, “this crazy, little thing called love”… I remember those first years of not really knowing the crops and when they were harvested and having no experience with “making hay when the sun shines” kind of living. I understood even less the need to constantly keep a finger on the pulse of the weather. I’m a slow learner, but I’ve now lived more of my years on our farm than off of it, and while I’m still a farmer on the fringes, I have indeed become a farmer of sorts. I too now check the weather and watch the skies, almost always hoping for more rain to water the gravel-bottomed soil on our land.
This summer saw our last good rain on June 24th. July rolled in with an unrelenting heat and sucked the moisture from the ground like a kid slurping the last drops of lemonade from a glass with a straw. The corn and soybeans hunched their shoulders and curled their fists to retain moisture and preserve themselves. I hauled pail after pail of water to the growing things and dragged that big, black hose around to water the hydrangeas, ferns, and brown-eyed Susans. I somehow feel a hesitation to pray for the weather I want, but I may have even resorted to that on occasion as well.
On one of those hot July days I was out on a run, taking in the beauty of the wildflowers that grow with vibrant abandon in the ditches and less trampled places. The chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, and a yellow something-or-other create a “bohemian rhapsody” (Queen) for the roadways and trails, flourishing without primping or pampering. The drought didn’t seem to hamper their blooming, and there’s a certain carefreeness to how they spring up here and there with nary a thought to convention.
“… walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen colour and design quite like it?” (The Message). The words I would’ve grown up with are – “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin” (KJV), and I would’ve pictured literal Easter lilies. Now, in my fifties, I wonder if the Teacher who spoke these words may too have been taken with the “bohemian rhapsody” of wildflowers that may have been growing willy-nilly in the nooks and crannies around the places where he walked. And when I consider these “lilies of the fields”, I see beauty, vibrant colour, and extravagance with no sense of scarcity even during a summer of little rain. Can we live like that? Not hanging our heads and timidly dulling our colours but being vibrant and unabashed in the sharing of our selves and our gifts? Letting the hue of our purple complement rather than compete with the yellow of another’s hue?
(Lilies grown with the combined efforts of my sisters Myrna (pink lilies) and Lucy (white lilies) and the Creator. Photos taken by Myrna and Lucy.)
I learned how to sew on my Mom’s Singer treadle sewing machine when I was twelve years old.The first dress I sewed was made from a dark grey corduroy fabric. The dress had a wide ruffle around the bottom, a zipper down the back, and was cinched at the waist with a few rows of elastic. That was the beginning of a long love affair with sewing. I loved the process of fingering the fabrics and picking out the patterns. I sewed all my dresses throughout my teen years and even sewed matching red and black plaid flannel shirts for myself and my fiancé after we were engaged. I sewed my wedding dress. When the kids came along, I sewed sailor suits and rompers, knickers and parkas, and dresses and more dresses. I would toil and sew late into the night working on a project. One year I went so far as to take hand sewing along to a performance of Handel’s Messiah that a friend took me to and stitched the hems on my girls’ Christmas dresses in the dim light while listening to the heavenly strains (and yes, that may have bordered on sacrilege). Creativity and the love of clothing has shifted somewhat, but, like the bobbin thread on a sewing machine, still pop up with regularity.
While I hear in the Teacher’s words an invitation to not obsess with what I put into my body or what I hang on my body, I also hear an invitation to art, expression, and wildflower freedom. These places of creating are often found in the margins of living. The well-travelled paths can help us get from A to B, but the toiling and spinning of creativity found in those marginal spaces can be what sustains and nourishes us. There’s a folk band from Ohio called “Over The Rhine”, a wife and husband team that moved from the city to a rural, brick farmhouse, and in the process of making the rundown place home, followed the advice of the husband’s dad to “leave the edges wild” (a line that shows up in their song lyrics). I think leaving the edges wild are words to live by. Those wild edges invite life. The wild edges encourage us to not tamp down those unruly tendrils that keep escaping, but rather, to follow their leading, allowing them to open up within us new ways of seeing and being that may be along the fringes of the status quo.
May we indeed consider the wildflowers, the lilies of the field, and learn to live with that kind of abandon, creativity, and freedom. When the rains are scarce, may we still put out our blooms, drawing nourishment that comes from the depths and maybe even from the well-travelled paths of habit and practice where we have toiled and spun. May we lend our hues and appreciate our contrasting colours. And may we too “leave the edges wild”.
