"As the gardener, such is the garden."
...Hebrew proverb
If you haven't guessed, I love gardening. I didn't realize how much I missed it until we moved to this house and its small backyard 4 years ago. Making things grow, bringing color to the dirt and having my hands in the soil - I can almost feel the earth's pulse.
My late parents would wait until I came home for visits - then get me to trim their shrubs around the house by hand. They refused to get a gardener - because if I did it - things flourished. My Nana, of blessed memory, and I had a productive tomato garden going behind our garage too.
When we moved in here the backyard was a mess. I had a landscaper come and level it right to the dirt. Running into him in the neighbor last summer he asked if he could come see what I'd done. He was amazed. He said I had turned an overgrown, bug-infested swamp into a lovely little yard. I felt humble. A sterile, manicured home is not for me. A lush place of warmth, comfort and love is more my style.
I have a passion for windchimes. Whenever I go somewhere I get one with an unusual shape or sound. A reminder of where I have been. There are about 15 in my backyard now. I tell my children the angels and fairies come and ring them in the breezes. I love the sounds, reminding me Hashem is here, breathing gently on my home.
In the winter I have 6 birdfeeders. I feed the birds in winter and they repay me by keeping the bugs down to a dull roar in spring and summer. I am like my Nana, of blessed memory, in that regard. I come to see the birds as part of my family. This year's visitors included 2 species of woodpecker at my suet and a cardinal couple, who I hope bring their children back next year. I've even outwitted a few city-fied squirrels.
Gardening is my chance to ponder and to work out my anger, my frustration, my tears and think. Sometimes my children come and help me. Its time together and a chance for me to talk to them; teach life lessons. There is order to a garden as well as chaos. Its time I can think about something other than my own humanity for a while. Everything is still an experiment in my yard - I plant and pray. As in life, some things work, some do not.
On my steps & front porch I have a flourishing box of pansies and mums, a scottish broom, tomatoes and a strawberry pot going. I have boxes of snapdragons and vines in my walkway and window box.
In the small front garden (which was nothing but literally piled up garbage the owners were too neglectful to remove) I bought 3 burning bushes which the grower said were 1/2 dead and 2 catmint plants that looked gone. Sold to me for 75% off. The catmint flourished providing fun for the neighborhood felines. The burning bushes actually "burned" this fall for the first time and looked wonderful against my house.
There's the lilac bush I always wanted and purchased this year, which will grow over my driveway. The midnight beauty tulips, almost black against the greenery. And this year's happy experiment - giant flowering onions with ball shaped plumes of purple flowers. The portulaca, the hydrangea, gladiolas, ferns and the moonflowers I am coaxing to flower.
My gift to myself and my gift to God - was breathing life and color back into the earth around my home. His gift to me is allowing it to flourish and giving me time to be with Him, while I tend the ground.
"To see a world
in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wildflower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake
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