Tending Soil and Souls

How to Grow a Heavenly Friendship on Earth

You don’t know a place until you’ve scraped its soil from your fingernails, and you don’t know a person until you’ve shared her joys and sorrows. Sometimes, you achieve such closeness in a single, stormy afternoon.

I’d been ministering to Janet for several months when I realized she needed more than a monthly visit in her living room. Frail but unlikely to ask for help, Janet and her husband lived in an increasingly cluttered, aging row house in northern England. At the end of one chatty visit, I suggested that next time I could help with housework or yard work; her eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together. 

That’s how we found ourselves on our knees in Janet’s overgrown back garden. In her sweet, small voice, she pointed out each plant—some wild, some domesticated. We troweled, pulled, and shaped the plot, taming the Yorkshire green beneath darkening early spring skies. As Janet introduced her old friends to me, I saw how their roots and leaves were entwined in her life.

English oak

We found hundreds of acorns sprinkled and lodged on the grass and in the shrubs. A few leathery leaves, their brown curves gently perfect, reminded us of last season. Janet’s children used to play in the shade of this tree when its now-fissured bark was smoother and younger. She hadn’t seen one of her three sons for ages. First, he stopped coming around, and then he changed his number. The photos of her boy had begun to fade. But English oak is strong, used for building ships and making furniture that lasts for generations. “He’ll come home,” she said—she was sure. 

Buddleia

Brought to the UK from China in the Victorian era, buddleia attracts butterflies and nectar-thirsty moths. In Janet’s garden the buddleia grew wild, its long, sage-colored leaves pointing every which way but mostly down to the earth now that the rain was falling. Nevertheless, Janet’s countenance was bright as she described the singular purple shade of her buddleia flowers—a cross between dark lilac and fuchsia. In fact, it was the exact shade her daughter had chosen for her bridesmaids’ dresses, long chiffon numbers with matching fascinators. They’d posed for a picture right here to capture the perfect blooms. “Such a lovely day,” she remembers. 

Wood Anemone

In its wild form, wood anemone features white, five-petaled spring flowers set against dark green foliage. Janet couldn’t remember if she’d deliberately planted wood anemone or if it just showed up and settled around the base of her English oak. Either way, it created the perfect fairyland forest for the neighbor kids’ Playmobil figures. “Those charming children giggled and scampered through the gardens, and last July, two of them stopped by, all grown up and grateful,” she tells me.

Golden Shield Fern

While we worked, I made the mistake of trying to yank an errant golden shield fern frond out of the ground without a glove on my left hand. Bright red blood appeared in the crease between my fingers and palm, and Janet jumped into action—or rather, she rose as quickly as her precarious knees would allow. After returning from the house, she carefully cleaned the cut and bandaged me up. Just then, the random raindrops steadied into a genuine springtime shower. We exchanged glances for permission. Seeing it, we lifted our pale faces to the sky and laughed. Band-aid in place, we returned to our labors.

Lily of the Valley

Although sometimes pink or cream-colored, Janet’s lily of the valley was white, and it thrived in the soil around the tiny pond her husband had dug next to the pathway. Just a few weeks from Easter, we marveled at the delicate blossoms, evidence that resurrection is the order of God’s green earth. We didn’t know it at the time, but Janet would soon lose Paul, her faithful companion of many decades. I hope her lily of the valley brought comfort in her lonelier hours.

After our hours in the garden, rain had soaked our jackets and jeans. Drops dripped off the pointed ends of our hair, landed on cheeks and noses, and slid down our necks. I could see Janet’s slender wrists shaking; it was time to turn in. We laughed at the state of our clothes and hair as we gathered the pruning shears, trash bags, and trowels, and I bid her farewell at her door. Then I walked home with a warm heart, careful not to slip on the shining cobblestones.

On Sunday in Relief Society, the instructor read a quote about ministering and friendship. I looked across the aisle at Janet—clean, dry, warm. Smiling, she held out a thin hand. I reached across the aisle, and grasping my hand, she playfully swung my arm back and forth, back and forth, like schoolgirls on the playground. That drenchy afternoon in the garden had knit us together. I felt God’s love in the roots he’d given me in another human heart.

Rachel Terry teaches writing at Brigham Young University and researches synthesis in composition studies.

Art by Claude Monet.