Tag Archives: Paths

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

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How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?
~Andrew Marvell

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Then the heart, the poor jaded heart, that must etherize itself to endure the grimness of city life at all how subtly it begins throbbing again in unison with the great symphony of the natural. The awakened heart can sense in spring in the air when there is no visible suggestion in calendar or frosted earth, and knowing the songful secret, the can cause the feet to dance through a day that would only mean winter to an urbanite.

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The sense of taste can only be restored by a constant diet of unwilted vegetables and freshly picked fruit.

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The delicacy of touch comes back gradually by tending injured birdlings, by the handling of fragile plants, and by the acquaintance with different leaf textures, which finally makes one able to distinguish a plant, even in the dark, by its Irish tweed, silken or fur finish.

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And the foot, how tangibly it becomes sensitized; how instinctively it avoids a plant even when the eye is busy elsewhere. On the darkest night I can traverse the rocky ravine, the thickets, the sinuous paths through overgrown patches, and never stumble, scratch myself or crush a leaf. My foot knows every unevenness of each individual bit of garden, and adjusts itself lovingly without the conscious thought of brain.

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To the ears that have learned to catch the first tentative lute of a marsh frog in spring, orchestras are no longer necessary. To the eyes that have regained their sight, no wonder lies in the craftsmanship of a tiny leaf form of an inconsequential weed, than is to be found in a bombastic arras. To the resuscitated nose is revealed the illimitable secrets of earth and incense, the whole gamut of flower perfume, and other fragrant odors too intangible to be classed, odors which wing the spirit to realms our bodies are as yet too clumsy to inhabit.

~Excerpted paragraphs from Let’s Make a Flower Garden
by Hanna Rion (1912)

For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. ~Job 5:6 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

** Images via Pinterest

340. I sit in my garden, gazing upon beauty that cannot gaze upon itself, and I find sufficient purpose for my day. ~Robert Brault

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The garden reconciles human art and wild nature,
hard work and deep pleasure,
spiritual practice and the material world.
It’s a magical place because it’s not divided.
The many divisions and polarizations
that terrorize a disenchanted world
find peaceful accord
among mossy rock walls,
rough stony paths,
and trimmed bushes.
Maybe a garden sometimes seems fragile
because it achieves an extraordinary
delicate balance of nature and human life, naturalness and artificiality.
It has its own liminality,
its points of balance between great extremes.
~Thomas Moore

My beloved has gone down to the garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather the lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies. ~Song of Songs 6:2-3 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!

269. Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world and leave only a margin by which we see the blot. ~George Eliot

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You shall see them
on a beautiful quarto page,
where a neat rivulet of text shall meander
through a meadow of margin.
~Excerpt from “School for Scandal” by
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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Margins–our lives are lived within all kinds of marginal edges.  In botany and entomology scientists talk of margins when they cite data about borders around leaves or the borders of insect wings.  The earth itself has what I think of as margins.  For example, phenomena like mountains, rivers, forests, or oceans hold things within or without; walled constructs built by the sea are held by nature and man.  Even our written documents and texts are kept inside a border of blank space called a margin.  In literary works poets and novelists speak of garden walls as the margins around growing spaces.  The margins around my backyard gardening spaces as well as the ones in public gardens I visit are fences.  Interestingly, at one time the margins around my yard were solely the fence lines, but now it is contained within its confines in places by an assortment of trees, some planted by human hands, others that sprang up by their own devices.

In the scriptural passage below God is telling the people of Jerusalem that although they are in a city without walls, He will protect them by being the barrier between them and their enemies.  The Lord does that for His children even when they misuse the reins of free will to wander poorly chosen worldly paths. Fortunately for us we never get so far down those potentially dangerous paths that we are out from under the spread of Yahweh’s mighty wings of grace.  When asked, He will pull us into a walled sanctuary where His forgiveness is an ever-standing offer for contrite hearts.  And as a fellow blogger noted, He walls our hearts with His love.

“And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,” declares the Lord, “and I will be its glory within.  ~Zechariah 2:5  ✝

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

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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!

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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

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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  ✝

208. It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost… ~John Burroughs

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We feel cold, but we don’t mind it
because we will not come to harm.
And if we wrapped ourselves against the cold,
we wouldn’t feel other things,
like the bright tingle of the stars,
music of the Aurora,
or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin.
~Philip Pullman

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After last night’s winter storm, we woke to find the ground, the streets, and the rooftops covered in a solid blanket of sleet mixed with snow.  Icicles were hanging from eaves and other solid objects; branches, stems, leaves and the few remaining roses had been encapsulated in ice.  The forbidding frozen world outside was steeped in silence but for the occasional gusts of wind that sent falling leaves round and round in capricious little whirlwinds tapping softly against the icy ground.

In the coming days the garden will shrink dramatically.  It’s beauty will be harder to see, but for those who continually walk its paths with searching eyes and vivid memories, emerging treasures can be spotted and glory envisioned in places where it was and shall rise again from seeming nothingness.  During the warmer spells in the next few months, I’ll clean up the growing season’s spreading, untidy tangle and reshape her fetching figure while below in her fertile womb mysteries, ancient and sacred, are coming together to birth yet another springtime.

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm.  He said From whose womb comes the ice?  Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the water become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?  ~Job 38:1 and 29-30  ✝

131. All gardens are a form of autobiography. ~Robert Dash

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In his garden every man may be his own artist without apology or explanation. Each within his green enclosure is a creator, and no two shall reach the same conclusion; nor shall we, any more than other creative workers, be ever wholly satisfied with our accomplishment. Ever a season ahead of us floats the vision of perfection and herein lies its perennial charm.  ~Louise Beebe Wilder

**(blooming currently in several places in my yard is Physostegia virginiana)

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Where does imagination come from?  It was spawned in the mind of God, and it is the conduit that connects us to our Maker.  I can think of no better place than a garden to let one’s imagination run wild.  It can be loosed over and over again in the ever-changing shapes of the beds and paths, in the kinds of plants that are introduced, and in the garden’s supports and structures.  My imagination has also led me over the years to include pieces of yard art into my garden.  For me it adds whimsical levels of interest that feed my inner child and would-love-to-have-been- an-artist self.

The LORD God placed man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.  ~Genesis 2:15