My garden looks a lot like Lent feels this morning.  The tender green shoots that had started to show are all blighted with last week's frost;  they are crisp and dead and sad.  My daffodils were nipped and brown.  It is a sad slightly depressing sight on a damp grey morning.  That feels a lot like Lent to me today.  It is a time of contemplation and taking stock, of looking at what it is that makes you flawed and mortal.
Underneath the dry brittleness and gray morning, like the ashes and pall of Lent, there is a sprig of green and a promise of buds.  I know it will come, although this morning it is hard to see how it will sprout through the frostbitten blight.
I might have to prune back the roses again.  It seems brutal since they are already so sad, but I know the pruning will allow the green to grow.  Lent allows me to take stock of what needs to be pruned in my own heart.
Pruning the dry brittleness from my own life will make way for "the wheat arising green".