Georges Seurat (1891-1859) was a contemporary of Camille Pissarro. He died young, perhaps of pneumonia or meningitis. I've included one of his paintings here, The Watering Can (1883), not because we're finished with Pissarro (by no means), but simply because the oil on wood image is so wonderful and timely, as Spring is trying to get underway, and as we have entered the second half of Lent - The Church's Springtime.
This is a metal watering can, some time before plastic ones became available. The gardener has placed the can on the edge of a curved shelf. It's a little hard to tell if there is a wall there containing a raised bed or if the curved part is more like a curb. There is a rather high wall to the rear of the garden.
The bright colored plants in the garden are likely lettuce which grows well in the early spring before the days grow hot. Maybe those are pole beans in the upper right hand corner. There are trees on the far side of the wall.
So, what's the watering can doing? It's simply sitting and waiting. While we can spend a lot of time sitting and waiting (in traffic; in doctor's offices, on the phone) we don't always do it well because we have another "million things to do." But that's all the watering can is doing. It's waiting for the gardener to return, to pick it up, to fill it up perhaps and take it off to some part of the garden where the hose won't reach. Or maybe the gardener just enjoys watering plants by hand.
"You visit the earth and water it," Psalm 65:9 says. Watering plants slowly, by hand, allows the gardener to watch the soil absorb the water, imagining the plant's gratitude. Using a watering can be a contemplative practice. It can help to slow down people who are wearied from zooming around.
Using a watering can can be a little way to participate in the divine life the psalmist speaks of - awakening compassion and care for thirsty life. I unravel the hose as far as it will go, and enjoy returning to it again and again to fill the watering can, and then to go off to the distant spots in the garden where I can watch the streams of water imitate heaven's rain. The repeated action is a little antidote to some of the anxieties which afflict us. For real.
