Category: garden

Now in Age I Bud Again

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How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean 

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; 

         To which, besides their own demean, 

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. 

                      Grief melts away 

                      Like snow in May, 

         As if there were no such cold thing. 

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart 

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone 

         Quite underground; as flowers depart 

To see their mother-root, when they have blown, 

                      Where they together 

                      All the hard weather, 

         Dead to the world, keep house unknown. 

         These are thy wonders, Lord of power, 

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell 

         And up to heaven in an hour; 

Making a chiming of a passing-bell. 

                      We say amiss 

                      This or that is: 

         Thy word is all, if we could spell. 

         Oh that I once past changing were, 

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! 

         Many a spring I shoot up fair, 

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither; 

                      Nor doth my flower 

                      Want a spring shower, 

         My sins and I joining together. 

         But while I grow in a straight line, 

Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, 

         Thy anger comes, and I decline: 

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone 

                      Where all things burn, 

                      When thou dost turn, 

         And the least frown of thine is shown? 

         And now in age I bud again, 

After so many deaths I live and write; 

         I once more smell the dew and rain, 

And relish versing. Oh, my only light, 

                      It cannot be 

                      That I am he 

         On whom thy tempests fell all night. 

         These are thy wonders, Lord of love, 

To make us see we are but flowers that glide; 

         Which when we once can find and prove, 

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide; 

                      Who would be more, 

                      Swelling through store, 

         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
~George Herbert “The Flower”

Our small church has several gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.

It is a treat to walk into church and see what has been brought to the altar on Sunday morning. I have started to keep a photo album of these very special Sunday “pulpit posies.”

Why are these special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.

These are special as most of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.

These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are picked from ditches and hedges. They are still part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.

These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.

Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, fireweed, burdock, and daisies populating the ditches.

No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of this gardening God of love.

As we age, we bud afresh for Him.

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The Running Down of Life’s Clock

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sphere of pillowed sky
one faceless gathering of blue...

… I’m tethered, and devoted
to your raw and lonely bloom

my lavish need to drink
your world of crowded cups to fill.
~Tara Bray “hydrangea” from Image Journal

Like in old cans of paint the last green hue,
these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected
behind the blossom clusters in which blue
is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;

They do reflect it imprecise and teary,
as though they’d rather have it go away,
and just like faded, once blue stationery,
they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;

As in an often laundered children’s smock,
cast off, its usefulness now all but over,
one senses running down a small life’s clock.

Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems,
and in among these clusters one discovers
a tender blue rejoicing in the green.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank

Dwelling within a mosaic of dying colors,
these petals fold and collapse
under the weight of the sky’s tears.

This hydrangea bears a rainbow of hues,
once-vibrant promises of blue
now fading to rusts and grays.

I know what this is like:
the running out of the clock,
feeling the limits of vitality.

Withering and drying,
I’m drawn, thirsty for the beauty,
to this waning artist’s palette.

To quench my thirst:
from an open cup, an invitation,
an everlasting visual sacrament.

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Pure State of Light

barnstormingblog4 Comments

How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.
~Mary Jo Salter “Absolute September”

Only nine days left of summer –
I search the skies for what might be left of it.

The mornings lighten later,
evenings darken sooner.

How can I not sadden at the change?

Yet this is where I am in life,
this time of bringing inside the garden and orchard
to savor and salvage before the rains come.

The light leaves behind ripened fruit of foraged memories;
in the darkening, its purity sweetens over time.

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Waves of Color and Light

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When I crack open
the door beyond
my ruminations,

I find starry
bouquets
of color—
crimson,
apricot,
and yellow
at the threshold.

Dahlias wrapped
in silk ribbon
wait for me
on the porch.

Their petals
long to touch
my face,

to widen
my eyes

so I may see
the waves

of pulsing light,
alive and fragrant,

like love
yearning
to share
her secrets.

I breathe in
tenderness
of flower bodies,

cherish
the blossoming
air in my chest,

I breathe out
from brightening
lungs,

a soul
soothed
by the scent
of earth,

a heart
encouraged
to bloom
at night.
~Claire Coenen “A Secret of Life” from The Beautiful Keeps Breathing

Is it possible for the heart to bloom
with a rainbow of colors that arise
from simple dust?

For we are made of blown dust,
with God-breathed air inflating our lungs,
as we become what He visioned us to be:

the blossoming manifestation of His Love

Vibrant, abundant, reflecting
Him with every twist and turn,
lovingly picked and gathered and cherished.

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A World Upside Down

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Obscurely yet most surely called to praise,
As sometimes summer calls us all, I said
The hills are heavens full of branching ways
Where star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead;
I said the trees are mines in air, I said
See how the sparrow burrows in the sky!
And then I wondered why this mad instead
Perverts our praise to uncreation, why
Such savour’s in this wrenching things awry.
Does sense so stale that it must needs derange
The world to know it? To a praiseful eye
Should it not be enough of fresh and strange
That trees grow green, and moles can course
in clay,
And sparrows sweep the ceiling of our day?
~Richard Wilbur “Praise in Summer”

It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. 
~G.K.Chesterton from Orthodoxy

I need no help to imagine this world feels upside down much of the time. When I read the headlines, I have difficulty understanding how anything makes any sense anymore.

Creation inversed: the birds somehow soar through the earth beneath us and the moles and mushrooms are populating the clouds. Instead of stars in the sky, there are innumerable molehills gracing the hillside. We are all mixed up in our perspective, turning creation on its head.

Thank goodness and thank God that everything is put back where it belongs when we are in sore need of reorientation. When we forget our purpose in creation, He reminds us by restoring predictable order and rhythms. When we destroy, He heals and protects. When we get bored with how things are – desperate for innovation and excitement in our attempt to turn the world upside down – He demonstrates contentment with how things were created, and turns it back to right again.

There is enough to keep us busy in this world: crazy weather, global pandemics, volcanic eruptions and quaking ground. We don’t need to complicate an already complicated creation with our designed messes.

We’re meant to admire the birds’ soaring in the skies and appreciate that grubs and gophers course through the soil beneath us. We can praise the sun as it rises each morning and the moon’s varied journey at night – so predictable and reliable and meant to be that way from the very beginning.

Keep it going, God. Do it again.

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Zucchini Chronicles

barnstormingblog5 Comments

Recite fifty zucchini recipes!                                                                                     Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;                                                                                 sauté with olive oil and cumin,                                                                                casserole of lamb; baked                                                                                             topped with cheese; marinated;                                                                                stuffed; stewed….

Sneak out before dawn to drop                                                                                              them in other people’s gardens,                                                                                            in baby buggies at churchdoors.

 Shot, smuggling zucchini into                                                                                               mailboxes, a federal offense.
~Marge Piercy from “Attack of the Squash People”

The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchini will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt.
~Dave Barry

One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight … Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won’t put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke.
~Barbara Kingsolver

It started innocently enough in April
with two-leaf seedlings labeled green and golden;
non-descript squash plants harboring
vast potential.

By June the plants crept across the ground with vines
reaching past the beans to threaten the cucumbers:
going where no vine has gone before,
to divide and conquer, leaving no dust untouched.

July buds formed blossoms inviting bees deep
into yellow-throated pollen pools
thickening within days to elongated flesh:
fecundity in action before our eyes.

The finger-like projections at first harvested
too small, but temptation overwhelms patience;
sauted, grilled with garlic, superb in
supreme simplicity.

But come back a day later: hose-like vines
pumping into each squash, progressive inflation like
balloon-man creations to be twisted and transformed,
but too plump, too distended, too insatiable.

It’s a race to keep up with the pace of production
eat some, give them away, leave on doorsteps like abandoned kittens,
in boxes in church lobbies, lunch rooms at work,
food banks posting signs: “No more zucchini please!”

They march in formation in the garden path
as they are yanked swelling from their umbilical cords
and lined up, stacked, multiplying
like the broom fragments of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.

Once tossed on to the compost pile,
they rest in intimate embrace through heated decomposition
in dead of winter, amid steam rising,
a seedling, innocent enough, pokes through exploding with potential~

Run for your lives!

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Growing a Summer Miracle

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You must grow your own miracles.

Special has been hormoned
and hardened against the bump
and bruise. Pretty in the produce
aisle, but pithless and pitiful.

I prefer a nude stocking sling
for the heft, a slow blush,
not the red-on-arrival rouge
needled in the green-to-go.

In a hot June—the prize, only
once a year, the furrowed fruit
weighs down its stems for clipping
in your open hand, quite full
of tender skin.

Take care carrying
them to the kitchen, prepare
the bed of lettuce or only bread
and mayo, and oh! say a prayer before
you slice a single slice and lay
the flawless redness down and bite.
~Rick Maxson “Beefsteak”

As August fades away, I am impatiently watching our garden tomatoes ripen slowly. I hope they can soon be harvested, bulging red and ripe, a miracle on the vine, before the rains and blight set in. Then I can walk past the grocery store’s produce section with tomatoes displaying surface perfection and no flavor.

Ordinarily, I love and anticipate autumn’s arrival each year. Now, at seventy, I am autumnal year-round. The threat of seasonal blight leading to rot becomes personal. Lived out in real time, aging isn’t all “pumpkin spice” and “harvest gold.”

So who am I in this season of my life? I have been planted, weeded, nurtured, watered and warmed in anticipation of a glorious harvest. Before long, all must be gathered in.

The garden is a daily reminder: time is short, there is so much yet to get done.

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A Puddle-Wonderful World

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…when the world is mud-lucious…
when the world is puddle-wonderful...
~e.e. cummings from “[In Just]”

My father loved more than anything to
work outside in wet weather. Beginning
at daylight he’d go out in dripping brush
to mow or pull weeds for hog and chickens.
First his shoulders got damp and the drops from
his hat ran down his back. When even his
armpits were soaked he came in to dry out
by the fire, making coffee, read a little.
But if the rain continued he’d soon be
restless, and go out to sharpen tools in
the shed or carry wood from the pile,
then open up a puddle to the drain,
working by steps back into the downpour.

I thought he sought the privacy of rain,
the one time no one was likely to be
out and he was left to the intimacy
of drops touching every leaf and tree in
the woods and the easy muttering of
drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind
grass dams. 

He could not resist the long
ritual, the companionship and freedom
of falling weather, or even the cold
drenching, the heavy soak and chill of clothes
and sobbing of fingers and sacrifice
of shoes that earned a baking by the fire
and washed fatigue after the wandering
and loneliness in the country of rain.
~Robert Morgan “Working in the Rain”

I’m hearing much “easy muttering” since the rain started a few days ago. And not all of it is coming from dripping and runoff into puddles. We all can’t resist grumbling while everything outside soaks, oozes, and drips.

A few of us die-hards celebrate the wet, as it has been quite awhile since we had a decent rain. Everything, including me, is far too brittle, dusty and tinder-dry.

Rain is what makes the Pacific Northwest special, but like in Camelot,  many people prefer that it never fall till after sundown. To them, these all-day rains ensure this is not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering than in Camelot.

I may be an oddity, though typical of northwest-born natives. I celebrate this country of rain whenever it comes, especially before sundown or after sunrise. I enjoy working in the lonely intimacy of a drizzling shower when no one else is out and about. Yet I’m not immune to muttering.

This was a hardy late summer rain, this falling weather in the last gasp of August.  Even this rain-lover spent the day puttering inside to avoid muttering about outside.

Guess I am overdue for a good drenching. Then comes the happily-ever-aftering.

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Each Impossible Blossom

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There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from “From Blossoms”

August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun…
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again…

Soon now, I’ll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I’ll be singing.
~Mary Oliver from “The Pond” from Felicity

…what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled-
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-
that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~Mary Oliver from “The Ponds” from House of Light

My friend Jean is a skilled gardener who has grown and hybridized dahlias for decades. What I see growing in the soil is her artist’s palette composed of petals, leaves and roots.

She has passionately cared for these plants; they reflect that love in every spiral and swirl, hue and gradient of color, showing stark symmetry and delightful variegation.

From homely and knobby look-alike tubers grow these luxurious beauties of infinite variety. I stand captivated before each one, realizing that same Creator makes sure I too impossibly bloom from mere dust.

Then He sets me to work in His garden, singing.

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A Pseudo-Saintly Bug

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From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
glimpse the grin, green metal mug
at masks the pseudo-saintly bug,
Orthopterous, also carnivorous,
And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us.
~Ogden Nash “The Praying Mantis”

Crouching on a cabbage leaf,
there’s a mantis, praying.
Sneak up very quietly –
You will hear him saying:

Bless the cricket,
Bless the slug.
Bless the fly
and ladybug.
Bless the aphid.
Bless the bee.
Bless the spider
and the flea.
Bless the lacewing.
Bless the gnat.
Make them healthy.
Make them fat.
Guide them over.
Light their way.
That’s all I ask –
these things I prey.
~B.J. Lee “A Garden Prayer”

When I spot a praying mantis in our garden, or crawling up the opening to our century-old hay barn, I say a prayer myself:

thank you that I’m not a random bug about to become a meal.

The mantis, like few other predators, disarms its potential prey by cleverly blending in with its surroundings, innocently folding its arms together in an attitude of prayer, but actually readying to make the fatal grab.

So a word to the wise:
those with multiple legs, buggy eyes, wings or a hairy thorax,

or those of us who scan the news headlines every day
worrying what might happen next:

it could be worse…

if someone invites you to a meal,
it is possible you are the tasty morsel to be consumed,
so consider carefully who appears to be praying (preying?)
next to you and why…

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