Tag Archives: garden

Finding home in a garden

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My mother asked recently what was blooming in my new garden, and her question provided the initial inspiration for this post.

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These yellow flowers have been blooming since we arrived here.

The beautiful early spring weather has also encouraged me to share some photos with you. While locals assure me this is too early—February can still bring freezing weather—spring is here nonetheless. I plan to celebrate even if winter resurfaces later.

I still find myself unsure about planting anything given our extreme drought, but I must tend the garden that surrounds me, coaxing it to be its beautiful best. Even if I don’t plant something new, the gardening chores—pulling weeds, picking up spent camellia blooms, trimming dead blooms—invite me to put down roots of sorts, to invest my time and make myself at home in this garden.

I’m excited to see what will spring up. Perhaps this is a tulip magnolia?

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Will this unveil itself as a tulip magnolia?

I’ve discovered mint, and the lavender continues to bloom in force. A variety of yellow flowers bring cheer as they open, and several camellias are showing off.

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The most prolific of the camellia bushes

Familiar plants remind me of home and remind me that this new home is not so foreign after all. There are unfamiliar plants, too: smaller, quieter blooms I cannot yet identify but welcome with eagerness.

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I carried my camera on this morning’s walk, hoping to capture the early spring in pictures. Cheerful birdsong filled the air, a hopeful soundtrack to accompany the beauty budding out on trees and along the ground.

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This tree started blooming a week or two ago and stopped me still mid-stride when I noticed its first blooms, stark against the dark limbs.

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Little purple flowers grow amid grass and rocks by the trail.

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My favorite moment came as I readied the camera to take a close-up of the purple ground-cover flowers. I heard the deep buzz—the kind that rattles your brain in a way a bee could only dream of doing—before I saw the motion. A hummingbird reveled in the purple flowers, too, and I just managed to click the shutter before it sped off, too shy of the dog and me to linger longer.

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Not my best shot but my favorite surprise of the morning.

Before I left Raleigh, one of my dear friends prayed for God to show off for me out here. This morning felt like God delighting in the early spring “garden” and wowing me with hummingbird moments.

Is it humanity’s origins in the garden that cause us to crave what gardens provide? Though not all of us enjoy the feel of cool dirt caked under our fingernails, God can speak to us and make us feel at home in the “gardens”—cultivated or wild—surrounding us.

Some of you may be grumbling that spring seems impossibly far away, but know that the earth is at work even under ice and snow, preparing a showy display of spring for you, too.

And all too soon, I imagine I’ll be wishing to trade places with you to escape the scorching heat and drought of this place. To shore up my spirit and embrace Jeremiah 17:7-8 (flourishing like the tree that doesn’t fear when the heat comes), I need to drink in these beautiful moments so I can call upon God’s showy, golden, thriving spring garden once it is just a memory.

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How do you see God showing off for you these days?

Summer in the south

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Though summer weather has been around for at least a month, the official start of summer arrived on Saturday with the solstice. On Saturday, I read a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, one especially fitting—and lovely—and I wanted to share it with you here:

Summer in the South

The oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid and hesitating.
The rain comes down in a torrent sweep
And the nights smell warm and pinety,
The garden thrives, but the tender shoots
Are yellow-green and tiny.
Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,
Streams laugh that erst were quiet,
The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue
And the woods run mad with riot.

Orioles don’t hang around where I live, but there are plenty of beautiful birds that do spend their summers here. I saw a goldfinch perched on the butterfly bush on Saturday, but alas, without camera in hand, I don’t have an image of it to share with you here. I will share photos of the flowers that were blooming this solstice day.

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Jerusalem sage … or Dr. Seuss trees?

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On my visit to the local arboretum a few weeks back, I came across a fun plant I’d never seen before:

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A new find for this gardener

Let me introduce you to Jerusalem sage.

I searched online to learn more about it. The first site I visited included a forum for gardeners, and this quote jumped off the screen at me:

The flowers remind me of Dr Suess [sic] trees.

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And now presented in living color

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In last week’s post, I promised you the color versions of the flowers. Here they are. I hope you’ll let me know if you enjoy them more in black and white or in color.

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. – Luke 12:27

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A red/pink striped amaryllis reminds me of watermelon.

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Small yellow flowers; I like the smaller flowers at their center, but they show up better in the black and white version.

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I like the combination of this calycanthus’ deep red petals and pale yellow tips.

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The black and white of resting

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In last week’s post, I told you about my hopes for a personal worst (PW) in a race. Well, I finished the race (yay!) and have a new PW (also yay?). The weather was beautiful, the course was hilly, and I took time to stop and smell the roses. Well, not exactly. There weren’t any roses along the course. But I did take time to stop both ways on the out-and-back course to hug a friend who was volunteering at a water stop.

She’s a great encourager and broke into a huge grin both times she saw me. Her husband and I had see-sawed places several times during the race, saying hello by name each time one of us passed the other (which made us both chuckle a little). He finished well ahead of me, running his best time in 10 years, no small feat at age 71! (This wonderful couple completed a 100-mile race last year, becoming the oldest married couple to do so.)

I felt happier at the end of this race than usual, probably because I hadn’t exhausted myself mentally or physically to run a fast time. That didn’t mean I wasn’t sore. The pain Monday signaled that I had to be gentle with myself. I needed to find a way to rest.

Resting in black and white
How many of you think of resting in terms of black and white? Rest means you’re lying down or sitting. Black and white, right? There are times we must rest in this way—a dear friend recovering from surgery right now knows the frustration of a forced black and white rest all too well. I hope she’ll be well enough soon to get on her feet for a more active rest.

There are other times when black and white isn’t the only kind of rest we need, when rest with a bit of color is best. Continue reading →