Garden of Weedin'

“One lifetime is never enough to accomplish one's horticultural goals. If a garden is a site for the imagination, how can we be very far from the beginning?” - Francis Cabot Lowell

If you read my last post, you know that I pretty much had given up on the garden and decided to clear it out and save my strength for next year.  Well…not so much.  I went out to take inventory and ended up harvesting about 2 quarts of green beans, peppers, and cantaloupe and then proceeded to plant Jack-Be-Little pumpkins and some gourds.  The garden is up and running again!  I just can’t do it!  I saw new blooms on the half-dead tomato plants and just that hint of life was the hope and inspiration I needed.  While pulling weeds and grass and clearing out the old squash plants, so many of the things I envisioned at the beginning of spring started running through my mind again:  an old birdhouse that towers over the garden keeping an eye on the flurry of life from nesting birds to bees and butterflies sticking their noses in all the garden’s business; a charming greenhouse constructed with vintage windows on the east side of the garden for sheltering potted plants and new sprouts in winter and early spring and all the while offering a quaint, little dreaming space for the gardener; and an extension of space for roses and cut flowers just past the greenhouse and beyond the fence in a derelict area of yard that sports full sun all day.  It looks so beautiful in my mind’s eye.

It seems there is never enough time for gardening plans.  Life gets in the way.  Oh to spend all my time in the garden, I would truly be happy.  God was the first gardener; He planted a beautiful paradise here on earth in the beginning and planned for us a long life in perfect fellowship with Him.  We all know how that ended.  The evil one slithered in and started all his drama and well, the rest is history.  So now here we are in need of inspiration to keep us going.  In my attempt to wade through the mess we made, God is an endless source of inspiration; He is the first bloom on my roses in Spring, the cushion of grass under my feet, the soft breeze on my face just when it seems too hot, and He was the new bloom on the half-dead tomato plant that inspired me to keep planting.  He is everything that is beautiful, not only in the garden, but in this life.

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” – Genesis 2:8