Abundance

I am learning that when you buy a foreclosed, abandoned property, you never really know what you are going to get. We officially moved into our new home last Saturday and I am beginning to discover what we got.
Abundance.
We made our offer on the land in February when snow covered the ground and the earth held its treasures in stillness. We waited and watched. First to be revealed was the abundance of things no one else wanted. Rusted metals, trash, and the remains of old buildings began to surface as the snow melted.
We began to clean up and waited more.
With spring came the abundance of things planted in the past. Peonies, bleeding hearts, lilies and other flowers showed their faces and burst open in radiant color through the season.
Summer grasses began to grow in abundance, warranting a search for a new lawn mower.
Underneath a section of those grasses was a garden plot, long abandoned. A weekend’s worth of tilling brought the garden back to life. With a large garden space, we planted seeds to our hearts content and now we are experiencing another kind of abundance. We have an abundant supply of deer who love to nibble at the contents of our garden. Our fence isn’t high enough yet; the mother and her Bamby are not detered. While the mother savors the bean plants, her youngster is content to ravage my newly planted hostas.
While rummaging through the remains of an out building, I found an abundance of honey bees who have apparently made a hive in a stack of old window screens. Maybe we will have an abundance of honey?
Behind the ramshackle buildings that serve as a garage, we found an arbor of grapes. In the winter, it looked like a tangle of brown vines clinging to old posts. Now, summer has brought us a lush green arbor with an abundance of maturing grape clusters. They are green right now, but when ripe will be a deep purple delight.
The back pasture brought forth delicious wild strawberries and along the hillside behind the grape arbor, raspberries give us a fun evening treat.
To my amazement, four trees in the back yard along the creek bed have brought forth ripe, bright red cherries. The trees are tall and I picked as much as I could from the ground, then resorted to a ladder. To reach the majority of the harvest, I’m going to have to put the ladder in the back of the pick-up truck.
Last night, I was contemplating the abundance of our new home while enjoying the tranquility of dusk in our back yard. I heard a rustling sound in the cherry trees and saw several crows flying away. The rustling continued and I approached with caution. I have heard bears like to climb cherry trees and bend the branches down. I know we have a bear in the area because we found a den dug into the earth in the back of the pasture.
The branches weren’t shaking enough to warrant a bear, unless it was a cub. I sneaked closer and listened. I heard a rustling on the ground near the creek and stopped. Was it the mother bear? Nothing attacked, so I continued.
I was almost under the tree when I spotted the culprit. Clinging to a high branch, hiding behind leaves, was the masked face of a small raccoon. The raccoon held still and I heard the gentle trill of the its mother coming from behind the old out building.
There are enough cherries in our trees to share with the raccoons, who can climb to the highest branches better than I can. I assured the raccoon I was not there to harm it and gave it my blessing before going into the house for the night.
Abundance. It comes in many forms and is all around us when we take time to be still and feel it.