Late Bloomers
October 9, 2020
Embers from the Fire
A weekly blog by Deacon Dan Wagnitz for the Quad-Parish Community
Late Bloomers
The fields and roadsides these days are dotted with the late bloomers. As the green grasses of summer have dried brown and stiffened, the asters have topped out and burst open with purples in defiance of the dying of summer.
The asters are quite unlike the goldenrod that took over the open and fallow fields already in September. Those look like small seas of tarnished gold. Asters bloom one plant at a time, here and there. But each plant holds dozens of flowers and so they look so much like bouquets of neatly bunched purples dotting the October landscape.
Later bloomers, like goldenrod and asters are important for the pollinators. They provide one last feast for those who search for nectar, long after the later summer flowers shut tight and final, well before the first hard frost.
It is a brave stand that they take considering the towering maples are already tinged with color, soon to be ablaze, not with a beginning, but an ending. The asters stand in the midst of the end of this season’s life and dare to bloom so as to sing. All around the air fills with autumn’s headiness of ripeness, but the asters breathe the fragrance of fresh newness of life into the breeze.
I began by considering the asters as the final harbingers of this season’s life now passing quickly, oh so quickly. But do they speak of a fading, or promise of a coming? Could they not be seen as an earthly rainbow – God’s purple bow stretched across the land as his promise that despite the growing chill and coming sleep, that life will triumph? I think it is worth considering.
The one sitting on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new!” He said, “Write this: ‘These words are trustworthy and true.’” (Revelation 21: 5)
His Peace,
Deacon Dan