A Soulfull Orange tree

The backyard garden calls forth a deep happiness. I walk its pathways amid flowering and fruited gifts and peeking weeds. There is stability here. It grows on me. Papaya, grapefruit and orange trees rest in their familiar places, green and growing. They beam in smiling sunlight.


It was my delight to enter each into the ground. I watered, fed. and picked off enemy bugs. I talked with them. Today, they answer me: heavy oranges and grapefruits hang low on thick branches. I laugh, pulling them off as many as my arms can carry. Some roll off and even more as I bend to pick them up.

I am my immigrant father of years ago who honored and worshiped his first Florida orange tree. “Florida is sunshine itself.” He bowed before that first planted fruit tree as if bowing at the communion rail... as if holy bread had been given from the hands of the priest as if this tree had come directly from God.

I too, bow and can’t help but exclaim as I hold the round balls above me: “God, You shower me with earthly benedictions, planting me in a bed of delight.”

The more I get into this experiment called life, I resonate with something called “enough” I focus more on what I’ve gained rather than what I might have lost. This garden carries me through, connects me with that place of contentment. I am rich and and the flow doesn’t stop.