Garden Pleasures
Genesis 2:8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there He put the man He had formed.
Isaiah 51:3 The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden f the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
Isaiah 61:11 For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.
John 15:1-5 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
I love gardening, and although I certainly am not an expert, I’ve learned a few things such as which plants do well in the south, near the ocean, are fairly salt tolerant, and which plants have a good chance of returning each spring. And Jesus loved gardens. He went there for solace, to pray, to get deeper to His Father, and I believe to absorb the beauty away from the dust, and busy noisiness of the towns.
My grandmother lived with us from the time I was six until her death when I was about 30. She was awesome. My mother worked as an RN and left for work each morning at 6, so it was my grandmother who got us up and off to school, and it was she who was there when we got home, as my mother did not get home until about 4:30. Besides all the house chores she did, she also enjoyed gardening and could be found in one of the 3-4 garden beds in the yard. At the time, I thought it a silly and endless task; she or my mother would weed and work and have everything lovely and neat, and a week or so would pass and the garden would be sprouting weeds again.
I was quite sure I would never be into gardening. However, I took a psych test at one point and was shocked to have gardening appear as a high interest; everything else listed was a definite interest, hobby, or career goal , and which I was well aware of having those things as a strong interest–nursing, caregiving, library, reading and writing, and sciences. But at that point gardening was NOT one of them.
But a very few years later, I was renting a house and could put in a garden and thought one would look nice at the top of the stairway leading into the yard. It was a length of about 25 feet, and I wasn’t going to make it very wide, just enough to plop some plants and color into the dirt to spruce things up.
I was hooked. I knew I liked certain plants my mother and grandmother always had, and they looked easy, colorful, and did not require a lot of weeding around them—portulaca or moss rose. So I chose some begonias in a few different colors, and got portulaca for a couple of pots.
So as much as I thought that gardening would never be one of my skills or interests, God had designed me so it would be. I still love color and mix them up; I like the different plants, with perennials taking up a lot of the garden space, and it is such a blessing to me when they finally emerge and splash color all over each Spring! Weeding can be a monotonous chore, but it is one that brings me satisfaction. I like the garden to be cleaned, weeds disposed of, and the flowers freshened. My neighbor and I share the garden space and we both like gardening and have similar likes and preferences, so although it has a mine and hers, it looks like one big patch, and neither minds pulling weeds on the other side.
Besides the gardening, it is a sharing. She and her husband do not live here full time, so it is easy for me to pull weeds on her side when I am out there and she is not going to be back for a while; and it gives her more time to relax or tend to other chores when she is able to be here.
But the garden is a blessing. It has lovely spots of color, I enjoy all the different varieties of flowers, the many colors and variations of shades, and working with the many different flowers that do well in this area. I have been pleasantly surprised to see some flowers reappear year after year; some such as amaryllis I only knew as an inside plant. I knew once it had bloomed in the winter, I could store it in a fridge for most of the year, plant in a pot in November for blooming in December. However, here, I plant the bulbs after enjoying the Christmas bloom, and it comes up each Spring!
God continually blesses me with the gardens, the flowers, the weeds and I get a little surprised each year because I forgot about something blooming and it returned. God culls out our weeds, (selfish and sinful traits), trims our dead or useless branches, and when I do that in the garden, I see some healthy sprouting the next week; it is a great feeling.
I want God to cut out my icky stuff so healthier stuff can grow for His cause. He has so richly blessed me, I want to show Him to others so they too can realize how much He loves us and wants us to be blessed with his gifts of beauty, satisfaction, and sharing our gifts with others.
Thank You, my Father for the gardens and gifts You have blessed me with. Thank You for enabling me to share through ‘mybellaviews.’
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