Gifts From Our Gardens

Gifts from Our Gardens

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Every season I learn something from my garden and enjoy new gifts from it as well, things such as there are times to plant and times when a peony bush dies despite my best efforts. I’ve learned to be teachable and ask more experienced gardeners their secrets to growing beautiful flowers. I’ve also learned that nothing is a total failure. If a rosebush I plant in one place in the backyard doesn’t do well, I experiment with moving it to a front garden plot so it will get more sun. I’ve also learned hope: In the spring when I plant yellow chrysanthemums, I enjoy their bright blooms until their first blooming cycle ends. Then I look forward to seeing the mums bloom a second time in the fall instead of pulling the plant up when it looks ugly. When I plant daffodil and tulip bulbs in the fall, I wait all through the winter when the ground is covered with ice or snow, hoping that in March, a glorious plot of blooms under my oak tree will cheer up an otherwise overcast, rainy month.

Whether you have pots of flowers or lacy ferns on an apartment balcony, a small patio garden behind your town house where you grow herbs, or an acre to plant with flowers and vegetables, gardening will reward you with many gifts: a perfect pink rose, purple verbena that comes up “volunteer” the next season when you least expect it, or fragrant, fresh basil and rosemary to season your food.

Your garden also holds priceless lessons for life and spiritual growth, lessons that we will explore this week. There’s an old saying: “As the garden grows, so does the gardener.” Come, grow with me in the garden. —CHERI

Creator of all lovely things that grow, thank you for the gardens I’ve enjoyed at the neighborhood park, in my backyard, and in Grandma’s garden when I was growing up. They are gifts that lighten my daily load and have much to teach me.

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.

—DOROTHY FRANCES GURNEY (1858–1932), ENGLISH DEVOTIONAL WRITER AND POET