251. More than anything, I must have flowers, always, and always. ~Claude Monet

January 17, 2014 by nataliescarberry

When we look deeply into the heart of a flower,
we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth,
and everything else in the cosmos in it.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment. ~Claude Monet

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration. ~Claude Monet

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

Like Monet, I must always, always have flowers, and I’ve discovered that cut flowers do little to satisfy that hunger. I need to have flowers that, as in nature, are alive and growing, and to that end my greenhouse is a godsend. From my chair in our family room I have a clear shot at the back shelf through the window in its door, and so that space is reserved during the winter months for potted flowers that aren’t suited to our Texas climate except as cool weather annuals. Also like Monet, I must have color, lots and lots of color, and so the more bright and colorful the flowers are the better. And again, like Monet I wanted to become a painter, but that’s where the likeness between us ends. I may have found a way to have flowers and color but not the talent to translate that beauty onto a canvas. However, the Lord in His gracious goodness did not let it end there. During my years as a teacher I was asked at one time to sponsor the high school’s yearbook. During that 5 year period I learned from the book’s professional publisher how to take photos, how to edit and crop them, and how to lay them out on a page in an eye-appealing manner. Then after I retired, with that training still in place, I discovered the amazing technology of digital photography, and voila, who’s to say an artist of sorts wasn’t born.

For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. Psalm 92:4 ✝

250. Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay, and at my easement sing… ~William Wordsworth

January 16, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The robin’s song at daybreak
Is a clarion call to me.
Get up and get out in the garden.
For the morning hours flee.

I cannot resist the summons,
What earnest gardener could?
For the golden hours of morning
Get into the gardener’s blood.

The magic spell is upon me,
I’m glad that I did not wait;
For life’s at its best in the morning,
As you pass through the garden gate.
~Howard Dolf

In the first photo, a Pinterest posting, is a European robin who according to my English garden bloggers is already singing in their gardens. The one in the second photo is our American robin who has yet to come, but when he does, we’ll know that spring can’t be too far away. For he, the stuff of a Messianic legend and spring’s cheery harbinger, will, as the poem says, sing loudly of its coming and our need to get up and out in the garden. Given my willingness to heed a garden’s summons at any point in time, the robin’s task won’t be too hard to accomplish. Would that I were as willing to listen to Christ’s calling. The last photograph I also found on Pinterest. Although I’ve heard and seen robins feeding their young in my yard, I’ve not yet been able to get a good photograph of the event.

For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I(God) know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. ~Psalm 50:10-11 ✝

**See post 46 to read the legend of the robin.

249. The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. ~Hanna Rion

January 15, 2014 by nataliescarberry

What pure delight a garden brings!
What joy in watching growing things.
Up springing from the sodden mold
Their wealth of beauty to unfold–
‘Tis here my spirit soars and sings!

To note the flash of painted wings,
And hark the bees soft murmurings
In quests of sweets the blossoms hold;
Where all gray days are days of gold,
Strolling its paths bright wanderings,
What pure delight!
~Louella C. Poole

My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock in the gardens, and to gather lilies. ~Song of Solomon 6:2 ✝

248. I look back with gladness to the day when I found the path to the land of heart’s desire… ~Mrs. George Cran

January 14, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Earth, thou great footstool of our God,
who reigns on high;
thou fruitful source of all our
raiment, life, and food;
our house, our parent, our nurse,
and our teacher.
~Edited and adapted excerpt from Isaac Watts

What’s that whisper in the wind? Do you hear it? Listen, there it is again! Oh, I know. It’s that ancient and seductive call that tempts the gardener to come and play in the dirt? And it doesn’t take much bidding before this one can do naught but hearken to the bewitching pleas.

For days now I’ve heard the “call” because even though winter is still quite young, January has obliged the “voice” by bringing some warmer days. So several days ago I began clearing my flower beds of autumn’s dead, leafy debris, cutting off seed heads to be scattered elsewhere, and pruning weak, leggy growth off shrubs and roses. Working close to the soil let me, as usual, hear earth’s heartbeat, and that sweet sound in turn spread a soothing balm over the spiritual doldrums.

Ironically, however, it occurred to me as I worked today that I was blessing the warmth of the same sun that only a few months ago I’d been cursing for its relentless waves of miserable heat. That brought me face to face afresh with the truth that too much of anything spoils even the very best of things, that there is a purpose, if not understanding, in all things, and that gratitude, when in comfort or lack, is the only appropriate response to a day’s gifts. So, you see, it was more than an ordinary call or faint heartbeat that I’d heard; I’d encountered the Teacher and He, leading me in and out of flesh and spirit, had shown me, again, wisdom growing in the garden’s “soil.”

…and the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. ~Deuteronomy 30:9a ✝

247. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. ~Rumi

January 14, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Every morning is a fresh beginning.
Every day is the world made new.
Today is a new day.
Today is my world made new.
I have lived all my life up to this moment,
to come to this day.
This moment–this day–is as good as any moment in all eternity.
I shall make of this day–a heaven on earth.
This is my day of opportunity.
~Dan Custer

Welcome the new day; it is a new creation. Greet it with gratitude. It is a nonrepeatable gift; it is a promise of resurrection. Miss not the day’s beauty. Miss not the joy. Miss not the wonder. Miss not chances to make the world a better place. Miss not opportunities to praise God!

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ~Lamentations 3:22-23 ✝

246. The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. ~Jean Giraudoux

January 12, 2014 by nataliescarberry

I am a symbol of love and immortality.
I have been around since the time of Confucius.
My name came from a Persian word.
At one time I was more expensive than precious metals.
I can be used in the place of an onion in cooking.
I am in the same family as a lily.

Do you know who I am? I am a native of Central Asia, and I am the world’s most planted flower. When I arrived from Turkey in the mid-16th century, I was a gift from the Ottoman Empire that took Western Europe by storm. But I did not come to the United States until the 1800’s. There are about 3,000 varieties of me grown around the world, some that originated in the seventeenth century. My petals come in every shade of the rainbow as well as black, but my most popular color is red. And I can be forced into blooming after I have been stored in a refrigerator for 12-16 weeks.

A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone.
It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose.
It doesn’t have to.
It is different.
And there’s room in the garden for every flower.
~Marianne Williamson

I’ve never had much luck with growing tulips in the ground. So this year I decided to try forcing them in containers. Two weeks ago after the bulbs had spent the required amount of time in my refrigerator, I planted some in soil and some in glass containers partially filled with pebbles and water. As of today I’m proud to report that I have tulips sprouting in both types of containers. Though it be only the 12th of January, springtime has sprung at least in my greenhouse. One of the most seductive things in life I know is the thrill of the first spark of life in a garden. Every time I experience it I feel as if a time machine has transported me back to Eden on the third day when creation was “born of the Spirit in the womb of the universe.” On that day the first seeds were planted in the earth and their roots reached down for the waters that would sustain them. Then and now such as this is clearly a manifestation of the goodness of God.

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. ~Psalm 27:13 ✝

245. Novelty is an essential attribute of the beautiful. ~Benjamin Disraeli

January 11, 2014 by nataliescarberry

What was any art but a mould
in which to imprison for a moment
the shining elusive element
which is life itself.
~Willa Cather

The foliate head and the Green Man are sculptures or drawings in which almost always a man’s face is surrounded by or made from leaves; it is a face that merges nature with humanity.

The Green Man is “a mythic figure that appears in art and legend throughout the centuries and independently in diverse cultures.” Purportedly the images of these leafy men represent life irrepressible.

Countless numbers of the leafy faces can be seen on medieval castles, abbeys, and churches. In fact it was the Europeans who are said to have spread the Green Man’s image and lore to the parts of the world they colonized.

For some the Green Man’s image symbolized the triumph of green life over death and winter. Others considered him the protector of nature; parallels have even been drawn between the Green Man and Jesus Christ.

I see the foliate face as a mould, as Cather suggests, in which can be seen the artistic quintessence of vegetative and human life. And as Disraeli proposes, it is the novelty of its beauty, unconventional as it may be, that is most appealing. On days when I can’t or don’t get out into my garden, I see my semi-human, foliate-faced “friend” on the ground at the end of the stone path out my back door. He is a reminder of the strong connection I feel to the natural world and God, its holy Maker. His eyes seem to peer longingly from behind his verdant leafiness in the same way I perceive that the Lord peers down at the world wanting to know, protect, and love His children. His countenance evokes thoughts of man’s need to create as the made-in-the-image-heir of a creative God, of man’s desire to feel connected to the whole of Creation, and of man’s hope that new seasons will arise again and again as promised. The man in the stone may seem to be locked in perpetual silence, but he speaks to me and I often talk to him.

…the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. ~Numbers 6:25-26 ✝

“Once you are REAL, you can’t be ugly” or The life of the little stuffed bear

January 11, 2014 by nataliescarberry

cookiecrumbstoliveby

Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby…

View original post 1,100 more words

244. The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees… ~Ranier Maria Rilke

January 10, 2014 by nataliescarberry

It is a good idea to be alone in a garden
at dawn or dark so that
all its shy presences may haunt you and
possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas

Reverence rises, a hush falls, and a lone bird sings on in the silence of twilight until there is no more cloud cover, no more noise, no more light. A waxing gibbous moon climbs higher and higher in an azure sky that’s quickly deepening to dark indigo. Silhouetted trees stand like giant sentinels over the winter-ravaged garden. The darkness around me now is steeped in calmness beneath the ancient moon that’s casting its glow through the branches of the huge oak as it heads up to cross over heaven’s dome. Although there’s an element of fear in the dark of night, something sacred draws me into it. Whenever possible, I linger and, in being haunted by all its shy presences, I feel the wonder of Creation beneath the stars.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established…O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8:3,9 ✝

243. A Summer fog for fair, a Winter fog for rain. ~Weather Lore prediction

January 9, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Oh fog! Oh fog!
What can I say?
You’ve painted the day
A thick shade of grey.
~Adapted excerpt from a poem by Andrew D. Robertson

A textbook definition of fog is that it is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth’s surface–a cloud of sorts, as it were. Since it wasn’t cold enough last night for this one to have been formed from ice crystals, it had to have been from the little bit of misting rain we got yesterday. Thus, the only strange thing is that I’ve never seen a fog of either kind come so early or last as long as this one has, at least here in north central Texas. And the somewhat dense fog not only wrapped its arms around the morning, but it has also kept us held tightly in its embrace all day long. Furthermore, as darkness closed in on us, it still hadn’t lifted.

The fog is an illusion–
A master of disguise;
Which hides the tangible
Before our very eyes.

It gives an air of mystery
That has long prevailed.
Dangerously intriguing
Is the fog’s foggy veil.
~Excerpts from a poem by W. Salley

In the silence of its thick haze this strange January fog has been reducing visibility and cloaking our city and the outlying areas in its mysterious veil of shyness since first light. In grayness not unlike a pigeon’s feather, it has literally held our world close to the ground all day long, coating all the eyes could see. And lying heavy on all that it encompassed, it kept the sun pushed back which sheltered the earth, smothered most of the day’s colors, and blurred everything as it clung to all possible shapes it could find.

Foggy mist, misty fog
Marvelous manifestation
Of magnificent nature!
~N. Subbarman

The fog descends
in the wee hours of dawn
like a sacred thing.
~John Tiong Chunghoo

Like most weather events, fog is often seen as some kind of spiritual force as it creeps along the ground and across the sky. Actually there seems to be something about all weather phenomena that lends itself to perceptions of sanctity. Perhaps tis so because all such events fall from the heavens overhead or, like the fog, are a part of earth’s mysterious beneath-the-surface workings. And because they are beyond our control, we feel helpless to stop them and sometimes lives as well as homes are lost in the wake of the more forceful ones. Genesis tells us that a mighty wind swept over the waters as God set about the business of Creation, and in His hands He held the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. As He cast them out upon the wind, they were carried throughout the universe on its wild wings. How could one not stand in awe and consider sacred such immense and mysterious powers!

In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…