Walking in the Arboretum this morning, I noticed the new growth of budding flowers, expanding shrubs, and towering trees. Fruit, now ripe, was ready to pick and newborn, Peacock chicks, skipped beside their mothers through the sprawling grass. As I passed by a pond, I looked at the algae that brimmed along the banks, as flies buzzed around the fermenting moss.
On this mid-summer day I realized how much growth there is when the temperature rises. When the autumn and winter solstice turns the leaves brown, the air cool, and the streams slow to a frozen trickle, the earth becomes dormant and little change occurs. But, in the warmth of the summer, there is much growth.
I notice myself, my shadow, and my outline as I come around a bend on the path and recognize I too have grown. In the days where I contended in the most heated battles, the fight for faith and struggles for endurance, in retrospect, these have been the seasons of the most growth and the greatest yield of fruit.
So be it. These are the hot days of summer, the season of summertime growth.
