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 ✝

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 ✝

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 ✝

242. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice and to make an end is to make a new beginning. ~T. S. Eliot

January 8, 2014 by nataliescarberry

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.
My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.
The thoughts grow as freely and the flowers,
and the dreams are as beautiful.
~Abram L. Urban

One of the fascinating things about a garden is that it’s never quite the same from year to year even if nothing is lost or nothing new is planted. Depending on the variable nature of the weather and the seasons, there is always a difference from one year to the next in the way things grow and perform. Since a garden is a living, breathing entity, it is always in a state of flux, a continuous inconstancy of gain and loss, rise and fall. For example one never knows how many seeds will germinate and flourish or when they or something established will perish for one inexplicable reason or another. So, like people, a garden awaits another “voice” each year, and every ending in it and us yields a new and somewhat different beginning. Whatever was said and done last year is just that for both nature and humanity, and I’ve found it best to leave what was said and done in the past where it belongs. Neither do I spend time thinking about new year’s resolutions because I know that the seasons in my life are always different and therefore evoke different feelings within me and different responses from me.

Time and time again life rises from death, and when it does, one can feel the beating heart of heaven and hear the hushed voice of grace–that unchanging holy voice of grace, that sacred in-and-out breath of life, the Presence that captures me again and again and again. For me that is the only constancy, and I simply cannot live without it or the Ancient of Days by whose grace I live.

“The sounds, the aromas, the speech of life that infiltrates and seduces in heard and unheard melodies echoing from every life form to cocoon, to feed us, to excite us, to give solace, to renew, to cry in joy and sorrow, to create, to birth, to laugh at the sheer exuberance of feeling, I love.” ~Patricia at: http://theenglishprofessor.net/qualifications.php

Obey the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; consider all the great things He has done for you. ~1 Samuel 12:24 ✝

241. O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed the winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o’er the dreaming earth. ~John Davies

January 7, 2014 by nataliescarberry

I paid a dime for a package of seeds
And the clerk tossed them out with a flip.
“We’ve got ‘em assorted for every man’s needs,”
He said with a smile on his lip.
“Pansies and poppies and asters and peas!
Ten cents a package and pick as you please!”

Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the store
And dimes are the things he needs;
And I’ve been to buy them in seasons before,
But have thought of them merely as seeds.
But it flashed through my mind as I took them this time
“You have purchased a miracle here for a dime!”

“You’ve a dime’s worth of power no man can create,
You’ve a dime’s worth of life in your hand!
You’ve a dime’s worth of mystery, destiny, fate,
Which the wisest cannot understand.
In this bright little package, now isn’t it odd?
You’ve a dime’s worth of something known only to God.
~Edgar A. Guest

Nowadays a packet of seeds costs more than a dime; yet one can still buy a packet of “miracles” for a reasonable sum. And the initial investment is small compared to the potential yield not only from the generous number of seeds in each packet but also from the seeds that those plants ultimately produce. I know because my garden is full of plants started from seeds I never bought. Not only that but lots of birds eat well on the excess “birdseed” I don’t have to buy. So it is that in nurturing I am nurtured. By becoming a part of the “cosmic consciousness,” I get to participate in the sacred dance of life.

The Book of Genesis tells us that on the third day the Lord created seed-bearing plants and trees. And from the moment He spoke those words, countless seasons have come and gone and the soil in any given garden has quaked with life from seeds forming in its dark wombs. As the trembling in “dark wintry beds” increased, an impetus not unlike labor pains pushed roots downward and tiny green shoots upwards toward the light until at last new “miracles” became stable,visible, and tangible. As more and more darkness melted away in the blaze of lengthening days and intensifying sunlight, the warp and woof of nature began weaving another springtime into existence. And when the shroud of gloom, winter’s drab garment, was finally sloughed off it was replaced by spring’s brilliant, gauzy garments, garments as colorful as the “silks of Samarkand.”

Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. ~Genesis 26:12 ✝

240. …everyone wants to be excited by something magical and wondrous – to be reminded of how they once saw the world… ~John Geddes

January 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

“I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life, insects unfolded from sacs on the surface of still waters and were instantly on prowl for their dinner, everything that came into being knew at once what to do and did it, unastonished that it was what it was, unimpressed by where it was, the great earth heaving up bloodied newborns from every pore, every cell, bearing the variousness of itself from every conceivable substance which it contained in itself, sprouting life that flew or waved in the wind or blew from the mountains or stuck to the damp black underside of rocks, or swam or suckled or bellowed or silently separated in two.” ~E. L. Doctorow

Life! Life I say! Life-sacred and mysterious–I’ve had a hand in creating life again! And as usual, it is ever so magical and wondrous! Since early last week I’ve been setting bulbs in containers in the greenhouse, and even as cold as it has been today, I made my daily visit out there to see if anything had started happening. And as tiny a start as it was, life had indeed begun! Actor Mike Dolan once said, you should “anticipate the day as if it were your birthday and you were turning six.” I did and it was and I responded like any normal 6 year old, with a dropping of my jaw and squeals of joy. The photos aren’t great but you can see where roots have started forming on the bottom of a hyacinth bulb and the tiny green emergence of a ranunculus bulb.

You garden because you need
to make a profound connection with the Earth.
It’s your birthright.
A primordial longing to experience
and participate in the magic of nature.
The deep knowing that ultimately nature is your teacher.
Your guide.
You’re a participant. A cog in the wheel. Not in charge.
~Fran Sorin, Gardening Gone Wild, http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/

My garden and my greenhouse are my classrooms, and the Lord is my teacher and facilitator. “See, God exalted in His power; who is a teacher like Him?” ~Job 36:22

232. Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

December 29, 2013 by nataliescarberry

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our mind seethe with endless traffic; our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences, while something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment–the kinds of people we are. The questions persist; what are we doing with our lives? What is the end of our doings? Where is my treasure? As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind–a deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear. It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered, our spirits are refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily rounds with the peace of the Eternal in our step. How good it is to center down! ~Excerpt from For the Inward Journey by Howard Thurman, American author, philosopher, theologian, educator

Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. ~Proverbs 8:34 ✝

231. I keep six honest serving-men, they taught me all I knew; their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who. ~Rudyard Kipling

December 28, 2013 by nataliescarberry

Curiosity has its own reasons for existing.
One cannot help but be in awe
when he contemplates the mysteries
of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.
~Albert Einstein

Gardening fosters curiosity, and the “curiouser” I get about nature, the more I want to know; the more I learn, the more in awe I am of Creation’s wonders and mysteries. That’s why in winter when there are fewer daylight hours and less busyness in my days, I try to spend more time lingering and reflecting on the who, the what, the where, the when, and the how of life here on planet earth. And I believe my musings on such matters are what keep my mind alert and open, my heart softened and quickened, and my soul ever-searching and longing for its eternal home. Moreover, the more profound the conundrum I encounter the more humbled I am by how small and limited I am in comparison to how big and powerful the universe, and therefore, God is.

Who can measure His majestic power? And who can fully recount His mercies? ~Sirach 18:5 ✝

230. He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter… ~John Burroughs

December 27, 2013 by nataliescarberry

Nature looks dead in winter because
her life is gathered into her heart.
She withers the plant down to the root
that she may grow it up again fairer and stronger.
She calls her family together
within her inmost home to prepare them
for being scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.
~Hugh Macmillan

This time of year there’s a separateness in the garden which I rather like, but I’ve heard others say that they detest the bleak lifelessness of winter. When asked why, they’ll tell me it’s because it fills them with a sense of loneliness or it speaks too strongly of death. I, on the other hand, find a comforting orderliness in its realm because I can see the garden’s defining lines again after they’d been blurred or even obliterated in some cases by summer’s reckless, spreading abandon. And when I’m out working in the winter garden as I was today, I don’t feel any sense of sadness; the feeling I get is more of a silent, but willing withdrawal–a retreat back to a trusted, reviving source. It seems to me that the barren remains stand self-assuredly in an awareness of Creation’s ever-faithful, annual renewal and somehow understands winter’s lesson of waiting with expectancy and hope.

As long as earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. ~ Genesis 8:22 ✝

229. So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. ~Gaston Bachelard

December 26, 2013 by nataliescarberry

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.
Most persons do not see the sun.
At least they have a very superficial way of seeing.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man
but shines into the eye and heart of the child.
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses
are still truly adjusted to each other;
who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

God sometimes reaches out at the most unexpected times to capture our hearts and attention, and not infrequently does He do that by using one of Creation’s eye-catching spectacles. When a moment like that happens, it’s much like when a lover surprises his beloved by pulling a handful of flowers from behind his back. And every time I’m delighted by the Holy One in such a way, I fall in love with Him all over again. A friend of mine recently shared a moment like that with me, and as I read her description, I realized that understanding God’s parables can occur when the innocence of childhood floats up back up in our present realities.

On this cool, crisp morning, I arose before the sun and
went out my front door to look for the newspaper.
But that’s not what caused me to stop in my driveway, paper forgotten.
Overhead, Ursa Major and other stars twinkled brightly,
framed only by a few thin, wind-shaped clouds.
And at a time of the year when children take center stage,
I thought of the innocence in all of us.
For it was not my intellect that held me spellbound
but my own innocence, untarnished by age.
In that moment, caught by the wonder of nature,
blessed with its beauty, I felt magical.
~Emily Seate

Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession? ~Song of Solomon 6:10 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

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