Savoring Spring: A Mother’s Reflection from the Garden

Spring doesn’t arrive all at once. It tiptoes in quietly, almost shyly, asking nothing but your attention.

As a mother and a farmer’s wife, I’ve learned that the joy of this season rarely comes in big, sweeping moments. It comes in between. In the pause before the next task. In the quiet hum of the greenhouse before the kids come bounding through with muddy hands and wide grins. In the garden, where the earth is still cool but waking.

This morning I pulled on my boots, still damp from yesterday's chores, and walked to the garden while the children finished their breakfast. The air was gentle, not quite warm, but not cold either. The kind of air that makes you believe in beginnings again. I crouched low to check the spinach and peas, brushing aside a stray weed here and there, and caught the scent of the soil. It was rich, alive, forgiving.

There’s something about kneeling in a bed of new growth with your hands in the dirt that softens a soul hardened by long winters and longer lists. The rhythmic tug of weeds, the careful spacing of seedlings, the feel of cool compost between your fingers—it brings you back to yourself. It brings you back to God.

Out here, the noise quiets. The phone doesn’t ring. The laundry can wait. And the children find their own way to the garden gate with curious eyes and stories from their dreams. Sometimes they plant with me, sometimes they dig up worms and talk about the names they’ve given the chickens, but always, we are together in it.

Spring teaches me, over and over, to slow down and pay attention. Not in a Pinterest-perfect kind of way, but in a deeply human one. The world does not need me to be faster. It needs me to be here. Fully here.

Joy is in the smallest things. The first rhubarb stalk pushing through the mulch. The way the cows flick their tails with contentment in the pasture. My daughter slipping her hand in mine while we walk back from the high tunnel, both of us tracking muddy footprints across the driveway.

There are still emails to answer, meals to make, CSA pickups to organize. The demands of farm and family don’t vanish in spring, but they soften. They become bearable when punctuated by these small, holy moments.

Sometimes I think of these moments as prayers. The silent ones. The kind made not with words but with presence. With digging, planting, baking, rocking, noticing.

So wherever you are—on a city balcony with a pot of herbs, or in your own backyard watching the trees bud—I hope you let spring reach you. Not just around you, but in you. Let its slow rhythm steady you. Let its quiet joys soothe what winter has worn down.

Because the balm we need is often already in our hands. A trowel. A warm mug. A soft voice calling "Mama" from across the yard.

And that, to me, is the heart of spring.