“a great thing of wonder to gods and mortal humans alike”

As many times as I’ve written about it, it still feels like a miracle. Years ago we had to have our septic field rebuilt. I remember the hard work of removing all the plants and trees that grew in the space over the field; we’d fenced the field against deer and bears, we’d planted our vegetable garden in long raised beds, and I’d used the areas by the fences for roses and perennials. I thought I’d potted up all the perennials and the man who came to do the rebuild carefully piled the garden soil, rich with 30 years of seaweed, compost, and (just before we realized the field was collapsing) a truck-load of mushroom manure, anyway, he piled the soil near the garden shed. After he’d finished doing all the work to install a new distribution tank and dig the lines, John built long boxes of cedar, using some wild-edged boards from a tree on our property as well as whatever else he could find. I gave the beds names: Long Eye, Wave, Old Deck, Raspberry Beret, Apple Round (for the Merton Beauty). This work happened over the late fall and winter and we carefully replanted everything we’d dug up. Imagine my surprise when I was digging a hole for a climbing rose to plant against the inside of the gate when my shovel brought up a clump of blooming purple crocus. Imagine seeing the clump on the shovel, the open flowers, the pollen dense and saffron yellow. I thought then, and still think, of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the mysteries of earth and the underworld and mothers and daughters. For reasons of my own, I have been reading the Hymn:

But when the earth starts blossoming with fragrant flowers of springtime
flowers of every sort, then it is that you must come up from the misty realms of darkness,
once again, a great thing of wonder to gods and mortal humans alike…

As many times as I’ve written about it, a miracle still.

Note: this is from Gregory Nagy’s translation, lines 401-3