March 29, 2008
In honor of the first week of spring and weather nice enough to spend two afternoons in the garden, I am reposting the following from last May:
Working in the garden today here are some thoughts that came to me:
- The bigger you let a weed grow, the harder it is to uproot.
- If you let it go to seed, it contaminates all the adjacent ground and eventually your neighbor’s yard as well.
- If you don’t cut away the dead growth, it’s hard to appreciate the beauty of the new.
- When you have a big weed growing in the middle of a beautiful perenniel, there is nothing for it but to dig it up, gently disentangle the culprit and lovingly and carefully replant.
- A plant with deep roots handles stress better.
- Sometimes, when something seems dead, all it needs is a little sustenance and a little care to flourish again.
- Sometimes, if you’re patient, that seedling you don’t recognize turns out to be something so beautiful and unexpected that it takes your breath away.
- It’s worth the work to dig up, replant, and rearrange things into new unexpected combinations.
- Differences are interesting and beauiful.
- Year after year without fail, renewal happens.
- Life can be heartachingly beautiful.
- Sometimes you have to get really close to see the beauty.
- And sometimes you have to stand back.
March 29, 2008 at 11:25 pm
“Sometimes, when something seems dead, all it needs is a little sustenance and a little care to flourish again.”–can’t say exactly why, but this one resonates with my thinking tonight. And I like the last two points, too–reminds me that taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach to life means I might miss something very wonderful.
March 31, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I have another one to add:
“Nothing prompts the weeding of a flower garden more than finding in the middle of all the weeds, a rose in bloom.”
I experienced this about 12 years ago. I had a rose garden next to the garage and walked by it every morning and night, and could see it from my kitchen window. I kept saying to myself, “I really need to weed that garden, so that I am able to enjoy the roses when they bloom.” Then one summer night, my eyes caught a peach rose in bloom in the midst of the weeds. Guess what I did that Saturday? I weeded the garden, and enjoyed beatiful roses for the rest of the summer. From that I can relate to thought #1 - the bigger the weed, the bigger the root.
If we would just transfer these thoughts to our spiritual life and remember to pull the seeds of sin early before they can take root.
God is working to bring a beautiful rose to bloom in my life; are others able to see it or do they just see the weeds because I haven’t kept up with the weeds?
This puts me in the mood for gardening, but I have to wait for the snow to melt.
Jonell
April 11, 2008 at 10:02 am
to see normally i require contacts, being the incredibly nearsighted person that i am. these contacts don’t work while attempting to focus on objects within a range of 6 inches. to move in close to see the beauty of the flowers i have to take out one or both contacts and zoom in for my six inches of working focus range. BTW…wearing only one contact is really strange brain confusing experience.