All Nature seems at work.  Slugs leave their lairs,
the bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,
and Winter slumbering in the open air,
wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The sanctuary below earth and sky is throwing open its doors, doors once “frozen” in bondage, and the introit to springtime’s metaphorical “high mass” is beginning.  Presiding currently over the opening ceremonies are the avian high priests, the cardinals, but with the arrival of the vernal equinox on March 20th, other clergy will appear to perform the holiest of sacraments upon earth’s ancient altars.

The vernal equinox may be 3 weeks away, but with the emergence of each new leaf and bud and bird Creation’s heart is beating stronger and stronger.  Spring’s early chants echo close to the ground, and as they reverberate near branch and cane, they tell me that the rest of spring’s holy voices will join in soon.  When they do their arias will reach crescendos that climb garden walls and charge over hedgerows.  And these ever increasing waves of spring’s sweet sounds will cross the land, discernible to some extent even in the mighty cement jungles of commerce, until summer draws near and spring’s benedictions and blessings are snuffed out by summer’s ever-increasing waves of heat.

Within the quiet, eternal rhythms of God’s heart one finds wholeness, harmony, and healing for the brokenness that transpires in the maelstrom of human madness and the exhaustion of today’s “cultural currents.”  Through the clouds of modern man’s spiritual and ecological pollution, the light that was in the beginning breaks brilliantly every spring as the sounds of the eternal emerge triumphantly from winter’s silence teaching the listener to reverence not only the Creator but all that He has made including his/her own existence.

You set all the boundaries of the earth; You made summer and winter.  ~Psalm 74:17

I managed then to keep a few square yards on a shelf
for staging in a greenhouse, and those few square yards
were crowded with tiny bright things  from New Year’s Day to Easter.
Their brilliance contrasted with the snow and leaden skies;
it was like coming into an aviary of tropical birds or butterflies.
~Vita Sackville-West, English author and poet

What you see in the photos may be a new world for me, but by no means is the greenhouse a new concept.   What lead ultimately to its invention began long ago when it was noted that discarded seeds grew better on rubbish heaps loaded with manure.  From that the idea of growing in a hot bed was developed.  Following that was the discovery that if one dug a pit for the growing of crops, the plants grew even better and more quickly with the added benefit of shelter and warm soil.  Further down the road during the 2nd century A.D. the idea emerged for building an open house with walls above the ground for growing plants.  In the beginning no roof was placed on the “growing houses,” but as the concept continued to evolve, covering them with thin slabs of mica came into practice.  Eventually fires for added warmth were kept burning around the exterior.  However, following the fall of the Roman Empire and the decline of their influence such horticultural methods were lost until the middle of the 13th century.  One of the great scholars of that time was a Dominican friar named Albertus Magnus who wrote knowledgeably on the subject of plants.  During the course of his studies he delved into writings about Roman horticulture, and it was he who subsequently revived the practice of forcing flowers and fruits in a hothouse.  The next reference to greenhouses is of one in the physic garden (a garden for growing medicinal herbs) established in Oxford.  In this garden a slate roofed greenhouse was built in 1670; it was heated by fire baskets burning charcoal that were wheeled around the walls by the gardeners.  Then in 1734 in the same garden the first wooden greenhouse was erected.  During this time greenhouses were coming into more general use, first by the very wealthy and then somewhat later prefabrication made the prices of greenhouses more affordable for the working man.

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will endure.   ~Genesis 8:22