Tag Archives: Garden

985. Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a little girl all at once… ~Lucy Maud Montgomery


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The reluctance to put away childish
things may be a requirement of genius.
~Rebecca Pepper Sinkler

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I am often accused of being childish.  I prefer to interpret that as child-like. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I tend to exaggerate and fantasize and embellish. I still listen to instinctual urges. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I never water my garden without soaking myself. It has been after such times of joy that I have achieved my greatest creativity and produced my best work. ~Leo F. Buscaglia

I resemble all the remarks above, and I’m darned proud of it. Mike Dolan said that we should “anticipate the day as if it was our birthday and we are turning six again.” And that works quite well for me thank you very much. Perhaps that’s why I squealed with delight late last night when it began to snow on my blog. I had forgotten all about WP’s snow option and was delightfully beside myself when it started to fall across my computer screen. We don’t get a whole lot of snow, if any, where I live, but now I know that for an entire month, it will be snowing all day long and into the night on my blog. How much more merry and bright can it get?! Love, love, love it, and so I refuse to put away the fabulous “childish” things that are part of the miracles during the season of lights. And another thing, what’s the best part of the Christmas tree? Isn’t it the lights? Well I think so, and that’s why the last two years, I’ve put a lighted outside metal tree in my house instead of the traditional tree. There’s no icicles nor ornaments nor any other decorations on it. It’s just the glowing, twinkling, multi-colored luminescent glory of elfin lights!!! How’s that for being a kid??? And a genius, I might add! Oh December is going to be a fun month this time around because the little girl in me is alive and well again!

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ~Matthew 18:2-4   ✝

982. Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree. ~Emily Brontë

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Not long ago leaves began turning,
From their many shades of green…
Into ones colored bright and gorgeous…
Reds and yellows, browns and oranges,
Glowing beneath the smiling sun,
Each leaf vying with the other
In the changing hues they had begun.

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Giving up their summer wardrobes,
Gladly; joyfully, and with glee,
Putting on their autumn trousseau,
As they leave their mother tree…
~Edited and adapted poem
by  Gertrude Tooley Buckingham

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Regardless of what autumn vocalizes,
it’s not until it plays “the harps of leafless trees”
and sings the somber song of deep December
that both the garden and gardener rest
knowing that it’s time to let the Lord and
Creation alone perform their miracles,
God from on high and
the earth 
from beneath the soil.
~Author Unknown

Those who trust in their riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf. ~Proverbs 11:28  ✝

**Top image is mine; other two I found on Pinterest

975. Rain, I can hear you making small holes in the silence. The many notes of falling rain are all in tune. ~Unknown

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Grey clouds flowing overhead
Dead silence across the rolling hills
Misting haze hovering over the grass
Water dripping from leaf to leaf
Speckling pavement like splattered ink
Soft knocking at your door
Feel it, taste it on your lips
Rain…
~Sarah Mariah

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The only thing I love more
than a day of rain
is a night of rain,
a warm, colourless rain
that paints itself upon me
in long melodic lines.
~Edited excerpt from a poem by
Stephanie Rachel Seely

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Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered in the distance – a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail. ~Edited excerpt from Henri Frédéric Amiel

May he(Solomon) be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. Praise be to His(God) glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen. ~Psalm 72:6, 19  ✝

**All images via Pinterest

961. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are. ~Joan Didion   

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 I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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And this time of year the edge is often closer than we hope or realize. But oh so visible did that brink become when we awoke this morning to find a cold, blustery north wind bearing down upon us. I’m never ready to say goodbye to the still blooming remnants in the garden. Nonetheless, I sensed earlier in the week that their demise was imminent and started putting the potted ferns and clock vine in the greenhouse. What’s more I decided to buy a large container in which to plant pansies, snapdragons, stock, alyssum, Sweet William, and cyclamen for like Monet, I always, always have to have flowers. So now I’m guaranteed to have flowery beauty along with luscious scents and colors even as late autumn’s unraveling continues to roll us over into winter’s drab and ofttimes forbidding realm. The potted beauty is on a much smaller scale than what grows and blooms in the yard, and the display is not as visible from my recliner in the house. However, the descent into winter’s “vale of grief” and the season’s allotted time thereafter never seems as stark when I go out to the greenhouse to check on the warmth inside, to look after the plants, and to give them all a drink of water.

National Weather Service Forecast:
This Afternoon
Sunny, with a high near 50. Windy, with a north wind 20 to 25 mph, with gusts as high as 35 mph.
Tonight
Patchy frost after 3am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 30. North wind 5 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.
Sunday
Patchy frost before 10am. Otherwise, sunny, with a high near 53. North wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the morning.
Sunday Night
Clear, with a low around 33. South wind around 5 mph.

The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. ~Ecclesiastes 1:6  ✝

**Images in my collage are from photos I took in my garden last week.

951. All was silent as before – all silent save the dripping rain. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Mid-November has come shrouded in its predictable gloom
Which has set the sky to weeping from its heavy clouds of grey.
Somber as that may be autumn’s flowery remains yet bloom
Albeit droop amidst the decomposing ghosts of yesterday.

The garden, it is still and as silent as a tomb except for
The rain that varies from mists to showers to a downpour,
And there are no birds, no butterflies, no bees, no cats astray
Venturing forth from their dry haunts all the livelong day.

And I, I sit in front of the window and watch in a melancholy
Kind of funk, the cause of which I know not except to say
That like a chameleon perhaps I’ve taken on the colors of the day
But not because the rain, the silence, and the peacefulness are folly.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ~Philippians 4:6-7   ✝

947. Creation betokens a Creator. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Nothing is more completely
the child of art than a garden.
~Sir Walter Scott

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I often marvel at the Lord’s artwork in Creation, and one of the things I love most about our amazing Creator’s handiwork is God’s occasional bent towards the frivolous. I see in it in flowers like the pink dahlia in the photo, and when I do, again I know why we are implored in Scripture over and over again to rejoice in the Lord and in His ways. Clearly God sees merit in such because nature itself speaks profusely of the Divine’s joy and delight in it and all that He has made. Not only that but after each day of Creation’s work in Holy writ it says that God looked upon what He had made and saw that it was good. Since this flower and other frivolous entities are a part of Yahweh’s grand design, I believe that perhaps they are made especially for times when the human heart has difficulty finding much of anything in which to rejoice. After all we are not asked to rejoice only in the good times but at all times. In a poem I read this week the author purported that each of us is “God clothed in a body.” Inasmuch as we are made in His image and as believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, at the very least that perception is a good way of remembering just how sacred and precious we are in the eyes the our Creator. Thinking that way might also help us rejoice more when we look at ourselves in the mirror and when we look at others.

Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him—his name is the Lord. ~Psalm 68:4  ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

932. How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence. ~Benjamin Disraeli

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To forget how to dig the earth and
to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
~Mahatma Gandhi

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There is something incredibly engaging and comforting about a garden, especially when one is surprised this late in the year by a find as lovely as this Heavenly Blue morning glory. However, even long after she’s gone when winter has plunged us into its “vale of grief,” there will yet be signs that point to primeval and sacred origins, ordained recurring seasons, and our connection to the Holy Breath of the Creator. But today it was the brilliance of the autumn morn, the splendor and blueness of the blossom, and a gentle breeze blowing in my face from time to time that prompted an awareness of the in and out movement of God’s life-giving breath in me as well as cognizance of a sacramental connection to Him. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest, said, “There is a communion with God, and there is a communion with earth, and there is a communion with God through the earth.” Teilhard de Chardin contended that the more he devoted himself in some way to the interests of the earth the more he belonged to God. It is the same for me. Being close to the earth in my garden or taking photographs of its progeny and/or nature in general, is like being attached to an umbilical cord that keeps me forever tethered to the Divine Source of all life, and therefore through it comes the spiritual nourishment that feeds my hungry soul.

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for He founded it on the seas and established it on the waters. ~Psalm 24:1-2  ✝

923. Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark. ~Henri-Frédéric Amiel

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Don’t ask yourself what the world needs;
ask yourself what makes you come alive.
And then go and do that.
Because what the world needs is
people who have come alive.
~Howard Thurman

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I remember reading an article a while back about Pablo Casals, the world-renowned cellist. He was in his 90’s at the time and still going strong so the reporter asked him to what he attributed his health and longevity. Casals answered that they were the result of his passion for music. When I read that, I was envious because at that time I had never experienced that kind of passion for anything. But the Lord knows the desires of our hearts, and it came to pass that He granted me things to stir up passion in me. It began one summer when I bought some seeds and sowed them in pots on my patio. From the onset seeing new life emerge from those tiny seeds, I was hooked. So with spade in hand, I began pushing it down into the soil and thus began my love of gardening. As my efforts flourished and the birds and bees came, the desire to capture the day to day beauty of it all became the catalyst of my passion for photography. Now not only do I have a great camera and lots of beds with wondrously beautiful flowers but on my blog I’ve also sown, it seems, a “garden” that blooms with amazingly deligtful people.

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. ~Psalm 37:4  ✝

**Images via Pinterest, and the music in video is my happy song

912. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. ~Elie Wiesel

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Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest,
to be completely present to the moment,
to taste the here and now, to be where we are.
Help us then, Lord, to be patient and
trust that the treasure we look for is hidden
in the holy ground on which we stand
and apparent even in the absence of light.
~Edited and adapted excerpt by
Henri Nouwen

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O, Ancient of Days, as daylight splits the veil of night, I praise Your holy name and wonder if you come to my garden still. If you do, do you come only in the early hours as I sensed at dawn today? Or do you come as well at dusk when light bedecks, with a touch of quicksilver sparkle, only the very tops of things making out of ordinary beauty that which is extraordinary? Is it in praise of your divine glory that the birds linger and chatter before their daytime forays and then again as they return at day’s end to find rest for the night? Are the gentle breezes I feel upon my face your very breath and the flowers I see fallen jewels from your holy crown? Do the bees and butterflies yet nectar in autumn to guarantee Eden’s resurrection after winter’s wrath consumes them. O, God, I want to know more of you and do believe you are here with me always; for if not on the lawn, I find your footprints upon my heart.

Let us approach God’s throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. ~Hebrews 4:16  ✝

**Image of titmouse and autumn berries via Pinterest

901. How mysterious you are, Lovely One! ~Mary Lambert

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In my garden fair is a trellis
where climbs a fetching Moonflower,
a curious, twining vine whose blossoms
hide in daylight and open only to the night.
~Edited excerpt from a poem
by Troost Avenue

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Oh white blooming moon, you’ve been
Confined in a bud below the day’s bright sun
Shutting yourself in until day is done,
But now dazzling flower that mimics the moon
You’ve unfurled to light up night’s darkness where
Sacred secrets can be told ‘neath a veil of midnight blue
For the light of the moon is the only language
To which you, your majesty, hearken.
~Natalie Scarberry

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? ~Psalm 8:3-4 ✝

**I actually got up and out early enough this brisk morn to capture a moonflower before the light caused it to close completely and perish. As you can see, her edges have started to wrinkle however. Moonflowers are in the same family as morning glories, and you can see a few blue ones over and behind it starting to unfurl as the “moonie” closes.