I have always preferred to invest in perennials, they come back year after year, larger and stronger. I like that the plants I have invested in continue to flourish and enhance the beauty of my yard. I tend to avoid annuals for the fact that you have to buy them over and over again. Annuals, however, are usually longer flowering, add a variety of color to your garden, bloom immediately, and are less expensive. Annuals are a necessity for those of us who grow vegetable gardens; you plant, grow and harvest them in one season.
Pat decided our home needed some garden boxes. While they were being made, we decided we wanted to have one become an “Archie Garden.” Peter and I went wandering around looking for perennials to invest in for his garden. After some major windstorms, seasonal shifts and just the process of time, our Archie Garden was looking sparse and colorless. I couldn’t handle how it felt, like we’d lost him again and our flowers reflected his life, short and beautiful with the storms of life ripping it apart. That reflection was one reason I didn’t want to invest in annuals, his life was over far too quickly and planting something in his garden every year, to have it die after a short season was, and is, too much for my heart.
Today is 7 months since he’s been gone, next month on the 9th it will be 8 months, the same amount of time he was alive. He had the growing season in this life of an annual. He bloomed quickly, drew people to him and then his little body couldn’t handle the cold of winter, and he passed.
The thing that I have to remember is that in one sense we are all perennials. We have been invested in by the Master Gardener. He has made it possible for our lives not to be annuals, beautiful and over too soon. Instead, we all have the gift of the Resurrection offered to us, where we come back stronger, with perfected bodies.
Though my heart continues to ache for the loss of our Bug, we know we will see him again. For that I am grateful beyond belief. Until we see him again I will notice the value in both annuals and perennials, they each have their place, time and purpose, just like us.
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