written September 2000
Although it is perhaps not the best thing to admit to, with a Cullen now as my pastor, those who are closest to me may know that I am not blessed with a particularly “green thumb”! (In fact, even my silk plants are hard-pressed to look healthy much of the time!) But last summer through a combination of securing a “work from home” employment situation and a reasonable work schedule, I was afforded the luxury of having a consistent bit of spare time each week so that I could plan and plant my first garden in my small townhouse backyard.
I spent several hours one day at (yes!) Weall & Cullen combing their entire warehouse, envisioning the combinations of colours and heights of flowers that would paint my backyard with a splash of beauty and aroma, and emerged with a trunkful of perennial plants and seeds that would hopefully grace my garden for years to come. I spent countless hours arranging and rearranging the pots of plants around the beds, until I was confident enough to set them into the soil and began to nurture them into their glorious maturity. Each week as I carefully tended the beds and kept them watered, I spent many wonderful hours in the solitude of this bath of beautiful colour, marvelling at the wondrous hand of God in the perfect splendour of the surrounding nature.
My one disappointment for the summer was one set of sweet-pea seeds that I had planted. Although I had followed the instructions on the packet very carefully, the seeds had failed to germinate, and my fence was noticeably bare where I had hoped their roaming vines would have clung. It was, however, only a small disappointment that was far overshadowed by the success of the rest of my garden (to my surprise and delight!), and so I did not despair in this one loss.
This past spring was a much busier one for me at work, and so my good intentions of clearing and preparing my garden for a new year of splendour fell by the wayside, and the brownness of the past year’s stems and stalks lay heavy on my heart. Finally in early June I found a few hours to begin to clear away last year’s remains. What a leap my heart took as I began to discover that beneath the dry, monotone decay of the past summer lay green, supple sprouts that had already begun to form from last year’s plants, and I was encouraged that my garden would bring forth just as much colour as the previous year with much less toil on my part.
The most exciting discovery was a curious group of green, all aligned in a row along the back fence… it was my sweet-peas that had laid dormant as seeds for a year! They had somehow now found their voice, and in seeking the sunlight had pushed their way upward to begin their journey of splendour! As I gently cleared the soil around them, I thought how often we spiritually plant “seeds”, either in ourselves or in others, expecting them to germinate right in front of us, and then despair when there is no outward sign of growth. Sometimes we need to wait a season, and then clear away the deadened growth to discover that God has allowed those seeds to develop in His time, not ours. It is then that His richness blossoms and is magnified beyond our expectations and blesses us when we may need it most!
This past summer was just such a time, as my work schedule overtook my leisure, and I was not afforded any time to nurture my garden as I had hoped. Still, the rewards of my summer past did provide much colour and growth in my garden, though untended by me. The previous summer I had intended to write down all the plant names and locations where I had situated them, so that I would not inadvertently weed them out the next year, when they began to re-sprout. Unfortunately, this thought had fallen into my widening category of “good intentions”, so that when I began to survey the greenery that was beginning to poke through the soil in early June, I was reluctant to pull up anything that looked remotely like something for which I had paid good money! There was one patch in the garden that seemed resplendent with growth and looked (to my untrained eye) like it could well be some kind of daisy, so I diligently weeded around this growth and encouraged it over the next couple of months to a great growth height of about 2 feet.
As time overtook me through July and August, I had spent virtually no time in my garden, though I took some comfort in the amount of greenery that was now about 4 feet high. However, as time went on, I began to get the uneasy feeling that with no hint of flowering on these intruders, I must resign myself to the fact that I had encouraged the overrun of my garden by an invader that was beginning to overshadow the colour of my intentioned flowers. In the parched mid-August I marched out into my garden to attempt to pull out these weeds, only to find that their stalks had swollen to a solid, wooden 1?inch diameter, and would require the strength of Samson to evict them from their chosen home. I had neither the strength nor resolve to spend hours hewing them down, so I continued to watch as their height now stretched beyond the top of my 6 ft. fence.
It was finally this past weekend in September, as I saw these plants laden with pollen ready to be sneezed all over my garden, that I finally decided I should draw them up out of the soil before they laid down their next generation in the surrounding beds. In that glorious crisp September air, I spent hours pulling up these giants by their roots, and laying them to rest on my patio. With the soil now well-watered and workable from our September rains, their roots gave no resistance to my tugs, and my garden once again began to offer some dying colours of purple and red and yellow and white – flowers too long neglected, but persistent in their growth and blossoming into the autumn.
As I was felling these weeds that had overrun my garden, I mused on how often in our own lives do we allow “weeds” that disguise themselves as flowering plants (sometimes through our inability to identify them for what they really are) to grow and flourish in our life’s garden, till we become accustomed to looking out the window at them and feel comfort in their greenery, not realizing that they will never blossom and bring true colour into our lives. And then when we do make a feeble attempt to pull them out by their roots, it is often at the driest moment of our lives, when such roots are cemented into our souls, and so these weeds remain, determined to grow and choke their surroundings.
In my zealousness to finally clear away the suffocating overgrowth from my garden, I sadly also pulled up a previously hidden huge handful of my favourite brilliant orange nasturtium flowering vine, and I cried. In this, another lesson was learned – that if we too long tolerate the rampant spread of a masquerading weed, we often end up in desperation tearing out some of the beauty from our garden as well as much of the decay. I thought of how overwhelming many of us allow our lives to get with “clutter” and busyness, until we finally recognize the imminent warning signs of “burnout”, when we pull back from life to slow ourselves down – but how often do we do this at the expense of our friendships and family, those who are the real colour in our life? I know how often in the past year I have told dear friends that I have to cancel a planned evening out because I’ve had too much on the go and need to rest. Although I know these are souls who fortunately love me unconditionally (for which I am so grateful), I now know that I do need to go back to re-plant and tend some of the soil around both them and me, so that we can both fully blossom and share our colour in this world!
Is your garden well-tended? Are you surrounded by resplendent colour and pleasing aromas? Or do you need to spend a few hours each week carefully examining your life for weeds that may quietly be taking over your garden, and robbing you of the colour that you seek in life? As winter is nearing and the autumn frost begins to put our summer gardens to rest, take time to plant some new seeds of friendship, hope and discipline into your life, and watch how God can bring forth a garden of unending glory and majesty. Happy growing!
