What’s in Your Garden?

Yesterday at church, an elder’s sermon asked the question, “What’s in your garden?” What kinds of thoughts do you plant in the garden of your life; what kinds of TV programs are planted there? Are they the kind that bear good and wholesome fruit or are they more closely related to thorns?

Botanically, thorns are stems that have gone awry through mutation; they were originally created to be stems or branches bearing leaves and flowers but became instead, deadly barbs. Even beautifully flowering plants such as bougainvillea, roses and cacti can have ferocious thorns and must be handled carefully.

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, the land became cursed and would no longer produce good things without a lot of hard work—along with “thorns and thistles” (Genesis 3:17-18). The ransom of the earth from the curse brought on by human sin is tied to the ransom of humans by Jesus’ death and resurrection (Romans 8:19-23). Perhaps then, it’s no coincidence that Jesus wore a crown of thorns when he died on the cross.

The above picture is my garden as it was last May— these days, weather and migration to the indoor garden have left it looking sparse. However, I found this morning that a miniature orange zinnia has bloomed. With temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s, spring just may return—and if not, I have some ideas…

New Clothes

A sign that it’s getting (slightly) cooler is that I had no trouble staying out in the garden for hours. My other work sometimes gets jealous but it’s good and healthy to get outdoors for awhile. After all, the first work that God assigned to people was gardening. The Garden of Eden was also the first home for them. Sometime, I’d like to explore the possibilities of what the garden needed from them.

Today, in my garden, I found the tall, spindly Mexican Petunia (Ruella) toppling over so I knew it was time to give it a bigger pot. My sister, who lives in a hotter climate talks about her purple-flowered ones all the time; they’ve been the trendy new thing in our garden centers the last couple of years, so I decided to try one. When I bought it, it had flowers on it. They were shriveled from the heat by the time we got it home. I haven’t seen a flower on it since (2 months!). Nothing seems to have helped. It gets plenty sun and water; I even fertilized it. “Don’t fertilize it,” she exhorted, “it’s a weed!” Maybe it needs a bigger pot or “new clothes”… Definitely. As you can see in the picture, a large root ball had grown outside the pot. I gingerly cut the plastic pot away (recyclable)—had it been a clay pot I would have carefully worked as many of the roots (without soil) as I could back through the hole and lost the rest.

An orchid cactus cutting I was given and hurriedly stuck in the “corner” of a pot of airplane plants also got its own pot. It will likely stay in the indoor part of my garden since it prefers indirect sun. Angel Face Angelonia also has its own pot now to encourage as much growth as possible before it winters indoors.