when it feels like winter

I went for a short walk this week and passed by my neighbour’s house. This house on the corner has the best garden in our neighbourhood, or at least I think so.

In the summertime the garden boast a beautiful marigold tree proudly positioned in its centre, surrounded by an array of wonderful wildflowers of every colour shape and size.

As I walked by this week, I realised that winter had visited and that I had failed to notice that the flowers were gone and the colour had disappeared.

This magnificent garden had been reduced to nothing more than branches and weeds.

I was struck by a thought on life about how winter visits us at different times in our story, when the warmth of summer has passed, and all the colour of autumn has been turned off.

Sometimes it rushes in, other times it creeps slowly without warning or permission, its coldness taking over.

It can feel unbearable when the harsh days arrive and signs of life have gone. The ground becomes slippery and uncertain underfoot and we secretly begin to usher in the next season often before it is time.

I don’t know how it happens, for at times it catches me right off guard, but somehow just as with my neighbour’s garden, the spring does find its way back again, and the shoots of life begin to force their way up through the hard solid ground.

Beads of colour break out once more, almost as though they were never lost. Something happens deep in the darkness, in the bleakness of winter and spring, it reappears.