Well hello, pretty yellow marigolds! One day that brackish swamp was dark and empty, the next day there you were with your bright sunny faces and skirts of purple-green leaves so delicately ruffled, nodding and smiling as though it were only yesterday we saw each other last and not a whole year slipped by. I am so pleased to see you, too.
But you know what’s really lovely? It’s that you’ll only be bright and pretty along the swampy edges for a couple weeks or so, and then you’ll be gone again until another spring. No, I’m not really happy that you’ll disappear so soon. But the fact that you are so fleeting somehow makes you all the more beautiful, and you are such a sweet reminder to me that “if God so clothes the grass of the field [marigolds of the swamp], which today is, and tomorrow [next week] is cast into the oven [fades back into the murky swamp], shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30) He cares that much for me? Wow. Thank you for the reminder, lovely little flowers.
P.S. Also, thank you for kindly blooming near enough to the edge of the swamp so I could take your portrait today without getting water in my shoes. Dry shoes are nice.
Rejoicing Hills 