Persistence In The Dirt

Persistence In The Dirt
Tuesday, January 17, 2023 by Phyllis Kester

Picture of yellow pansies in full bloom. After dark, wintry, sun-deprived days, I yearn for bright yellow-colored flowers announcing Spring. I’m partial to a group of large, solid-yellow pansies that form a continuous blanket of yellow after establishing their roots over the winter.

Other flowers bloom early, but it has become my fall ritual to plant the largest solid-colored pansies I can find. Outside a window I often glance through, there’s a spot at the base of a large oak tree that I watch in anticipation of Spring. But there are obstacles to my goal of an early sea of yellow.

We live in a neighborhood with large oak trees, many over 100 feet tall, so we have multitudes of acorns and squirrels. Apparently digging in the soil stirs up the smell of acorns because the squirrels and I have a contest that usually lasts squirrel eating a nut several weeks. They dig around my new plants, often leaving them—roots exposed—on top of the ground. Daily, I diligently put them back into the ground. This year, about the time I thought I had won my skirmish with the squirrels, I noticed about ten or twelve plants scattered all over the backyard. I hurried outside to save my pansies by replanting them.

Since when did the squirrels start pulling up my flowers instead of just digging around them?

The weather turned cold and a foot of snow covered the ground. I forgot my flowers hiding under the snow. One day, to my horror, I noticed my entire pansy flowerbed looked trashed. Deep puncture holes were all over it and … Oh, my poor babies … you’ve been pulled up … you’re everywhere but in the ground!

Rushing outside, I examined the strange puncture holes in the flowerbeds.

Deer tracks! They pulled up whole plants! I’ve never struggled with deer before. Do I give up, or put the plants back in the ground again? In my mind I can still hear my dad telling me, “Girl, persistence is just stubbornness with a purpose.”

I guess I’m stubborn because every year my rows of pansies facing the back windows of the house become scraggly as they struggle to survive many trips in and out of the soil. But, ohh-h, the glorious yellow blooms of those that survive until spring send my spirit soaring with triumphant pleasure.

As I gently placed my deer-snatched pansies back in the soil, it dawned on me that we all have small things (like squirrels) trying to disrupt our plans. Often, just as we think we have it made, a big problem can devastate and uproot everything. Do we persist?

I ask myself that question every year as I gently put those little plants back into the ground. Then I smile at the thought of the reward I anticipate each spring. Aren’t our lives and child rearing the same? We must persist against those pesky squirrels and devastating deer so that someday we will hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

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