Savor the Small Pleasures

by Richard Kordesh

What a difference eighty-four days can make! 

That’s how long it took our pole beans to unfold from sprouts poking out of the ground into seven-foot vines sprinkled with flowers. 

After twenty-three years of gardening, I still feel a little awestruck each time I see the tiny seed go into the ground, disappear for a few days, and then upset the dirt as an irrepressible, green offspring, reaching for sun, the single star that gives it life.

Pole bean plants extend for a while until tendrils appear that enable them to grasp the objects that the plants will climb. Up they surge for another period of weeks; then their flowers burst forth. 

Pole beans in the garden

This summer, those blooms display as red and white. Each flower will convert quickly into a long, jade-colored fruit. The harvest will follow. A bed with a dozen plants can generate hundreds of juicy beans.

Along another vein, what a difference sixty-one days can make!  (Plus nineteen years give or take.) 

That’s the time that elapsed between our son, Greg’s, birth, and last Tuesday, when his mother and I left him at the university to begin training as a Resident Assistant. 

He’ll soon be guiding freshman business students through their own early steps into college life. 

Yesterday, he and his colleagues learned in pairs another essential use of water as they practiced aiming high-pressure fire hoses at imaginary fires.

Our kids grew up with our gardens: After twenty-six years of fatherhood, I’m still captivated by their unfolding too, reaching for the stars that will inspire them.

Guest blogger Richard S. Kordesh is the author of Restoring Power to Parents and Places and has worked professionally in the community development field for 35 years. Visit Richard's website for more.