While the Preacher took himself out of province to visit family for a few weeks, I laid a flagstone path to the back garden, hoping to surprise him on his return.
The path didn't impress him much. He liked it even less when the edge of one stone broke a blade on the riding mower. Then a second blade caught on the same stone, flinging rock shards about like stray bullets. "Hon," he said, a tad tartly. "Up come the stones."
So earlier this summer, our grandbeans "helped" dissemble the path. We lugged each stone over to the four foot rise at the bottom of the garden - a defunct sewage mound they've dubbed Hope Mountain. (Hope Slope is more like it.)
The fall we moved into Hope House, our eldest grandbean and I planted tulips on the mound. For two springs their bright colours have illuminated that otherwise unattractive, weedy pimple on the prairie. Remembering those tulips brought new vision for both stones and slope.
"Nana," asked Tabatha, as she lugged the smaller rocks. "Why are we putting these on Hope Mountain?"
"We're making a rock garden, Butterfly Bean," I said.
She stood a moment, processing that through her almost five years of Basic Nature Lessons for Newcomers to the Planet.
"Nana." She spoke firmly. "Rocks don't grow."
Farmers may argue that point. I didn't.
As I pulled up the stones, I noticed tiny red ants scrambling beneath them. Six-year-old Benjamin crouched down, peering curiously. "Nana, are those are the biting kind of ants?"
"I'm not sure, Mr. Bean," said I.
He stood up. Hollered at his sister. "Tabatha, come here." She did so.
"Sit down right there," Benjamin ordered, pointing to the angry red swarm. "See if those are the biting kind of ants."
His canny sibling's nature lessons kicked in again. "No, Benjamin," she said.
Not one to easily desert a quest, my pragmatic Bean tried the next sister down. But three-year-olds grow wise in the way of mischievous elder brothers.
"No, Benjamin," she said.
Sensing a shortage of willing bottoms, I offered another possibility. "How about you sit down?"
"No, Nana," he said, his interest in scientific experimentation waning suddenly.
The mower blades eat only grass these days. Chickweed has covered the bare patches left by the stones. The ants remain unclassified. And the stones, as Tabatha predicted, have grown not at all.
But to my delight, Hope Slope's transformation has inspired a neighbour. "We've decided to do the same with our mound," she said. "I hope you don't mind." Mind? Not at all. But I never imagined anyone was watching us solve the little complexities of our life.
I should have known better. In matters of life, as in matters of faith, someone's always watching. A city set on a hill, Jesus said, cannot be hidden. You are the light of the world, Jesus said. Shine.
You are salt, Jesus said. Season.
The best type of witnessing is often the most ordinary kind of living. And preaching isn't always necessary.
