Gardening isn’t everybody’s thing, I know. But even through the hard work, I enjoy watching plants poke their heads through the ground every Spring. Nothing proclaims the end of winter deadness like life showing up from the ground or hearing returning birdsong in the trees. I admit I love it. It reminds me that God has not forgotten us.
As I cleared out my flowerbeds during my stay-cation last week, I could just hear plants lamenting as I worked them over.
“Oooh! Ouch!” This from the hostas: “Can’t she be more careful? Look what she did! She pulled that rake through my tips just like she’d pull a brush through her tangled hair! Can’t she see my tips are new and tender? Just because they were covered with pine needles and need to see the sun doesn’t mean she should just rake me over. She pulled one of my tips off…owwwwwww!”
Then the roses: “wait! Don’t come near me with those big sharp things! I’ll claw you first!” And so they did. But my sharp things were long handled, and I still lopped off the dead stalks. You should see them taking deep breaths now! The bases are swept clean and they are stretching tall now, like birds spreading their wings, opening up those new red tipped buds to leaves.
And why did no one tell me that Columbine, with its cute, giggly flower, is actually a weed that spreads far and wide? And I mean FAR and WIDE! I had to corral that plant. “No, no! Don’t pull my limbs off over there in the far regions of the garden. I tell you, I didn’t do that creeping! It’s a lie – whatever you weren’t told! I swear it!” Uh huh.
Then – the crowning glory! The two boxes of iris tubers, that had been pulled from the ground last Fall and left in the dark all winter were brought out to be replanted in a place they can flourish. All kinds of glorious colors! But, they all looked brown going into the ground. I can hear them, “It’s been so dark, why did you put us through that? Don’t you know how lonely it was and depressing? Just look at us, all brown and ugly. How can anything good come of this?”
But just wait—because of the dark, and the wait, glorious blooms will break forth and the time of dark waiting will be over and forgotten.
The Hand of the Gardener is upon us. How He cares that our beauty reflects Him. Because of His careful tending, we will bloom in the Spring.
“The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed” Gen 2:8.
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