Here comes the sun: Spring is near

“I’ll go ahead and take that 50 pound bag of fertilizer,” I told the proprietor at the feed store, after briefly debating the matter in my mind.

The fertilizer was my deposit for the promise of spring.

It happens every year: From the warmth of my house, I look out my window to the fallow mound of earth I call my garden and ask myself, Should I prepare to plant, or should I let her go?

The toil, the time, the trouble she brings: Why not just stay cocooned in winter’s somnambulant embrace?

For a gardener wavering between a commitment to the task and a relinquishment of duty, the past few months have proven tempting. Winter has stayed around until he has become an annoying, but nonetheless accommodating sleeping partner, a convenient excuse to stay in bed: “Spring is a distant memory,” he entices, “so slumber a little longer; why trouble thyself with cultivating?”

One day when the weather was once again being its fickle self---this time hovering between winter and early spring---having tended to my compost piles, I knelt on bended knee near the heart of my garden and felt for a pulse. Ol’ man winter kicked me in the seat of my pants, pushing me down on all fours, roaring by with a frosty laugh before settling beside me in a frigid pose, grinning in triumph.

“He still has us in his grip,” I told my garden, “But hang in there. He can’t last forever.”

Or can he?

Will spring ever arrive? Will winter’s tendrils forever keep his hold on the dirt, making it cower beneath the blast of his arctic breath?

In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, four kids crawl through a wardrobe and stumble into the land of Narnia, a land of splendor that is unfortunately dominated by an evil White Witch. Under her control, it is “always winter,” in Narnia.

Listening to the morning forecast, I wondered, Am I in Narnia?

I had to do something.

Late one evening, with the sun bowing to the horizon, I took my 18 month old grandson in my arms, and with a little help from my friends, began singing “Here Comes the Sun,” to him. (Eli doesn’t care that I’m off key.) And as we danced about the room, he stretched his arm straight out, like someone performing the Tango, and with his brow furrowed, pointed his index finger in the direction of the back door.

I knew exactly where he was determined to go: the garden.

It was time---time to break the spell.

Babies have that sixth sense, you know.

Locking eyes, we danced to the door, while I mouthed George Harrison’s words, “Little darling/It’s been a long, cold lonely winter,” swaying Eli in my arms, until we reached the garden, where I kicked up some dirt with my Red Wings, hoping to wake the frozen ground from the  chill of winter’s spell.

I paused, and clutching Eli ever so tightly, I breathed deeply, slowly taking in a full measure of the cold, evening air.

Then I pointed to the fading ball of fire in the west.

“Sun.”

 Eli nodded his head firmly one time in acknowledgment.

Swirling around full circle with him snuggled to my chest, I sang again, “Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.”

He nodded once, twice, then thrice--- as if he were instinctively responding to my incantation.

“It’s coming to Kentucky, to the garden, and to you, my little Kentucky Boy.”

His smile stretched across his pacifier till it dropped from his lips. His baby fingers pulled my neck to his.

We felt it together, the two of us. It was faint, but it was there: the promise of spring.

The fertilizer is still in the bag, but not for long.

The snow is melting; the sun is shining; the spell is broken: Spring is near.