Sacred Dew Drops

After the last rain, I strolled outside to inhale the fresh air. Fascinated by the dew on my plants. I retrieved my camera to photograph what I saw.  Idea for a blog, I thought. But the topic I envisioned that day was rather black and white. Black words arranged into sentences on a white computer screen. Words such as dew point, temperature, and relative humidity. Mere words.

There's nothing wrong with such topics or words. But after losing more than a few friends and acquaintances to cancer recently, I found my direction shifting; my focus, changing. My garden was showing me something sacred. Yet in my busyness, I was about to miss it.  All you need to do in our neck of the woods is stop and notice spring.  Spring break, Passover, Easter — this season of the year is a time to reflect and refocus on your garden, whatever you believe and whatever you plant.

Where I come from, there's a song I learned as a kid that speaks to coming “to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses.”  Over the years, I seldom gave pause to observing dew drops. However, now as I review those earlier photographs I took, I see what alluded me before. Spattering. Splashing. The leaves almost appear as if they are seeping with sweat. More to the point, dew on plants looks like they're weeping. Water diamonds that vanish with a touch.

Perhaps I'm waxing a bit too poetic here. Forgive me. Gardeners who are also writers can't help themselves sometimes. When we see spiders in shadows and lessons in loss, we look for ways to describe what is in our face so readers see it, too.

Today, back in my garden again on bended knee staring at dirt, I realized there's not a better position on earth for cultivating what matters. Gratitude for each rain shower that renews the sun-parched earth. Gratitude for simple yet sacred dew drops. Gratitude for every single moment of this topsy-turvy unpredictable life, even if the living of it means that I risk losing. 

Dew drops. (photos by Launa Herrmann)

Dew2

Dew6

Read more