garden – Barnstorming

Thinking Its Way Up

April 24, 2026 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

When I take the chilly tools
from the shed’s darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.

Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
~Jane Kenyon from “April Chores” from Collected Poems

…a pruning knife’s hooked blade biting
through the stalks with a flick of her wrist
and a quick snap.

The one time I tried this I sliced deep
into my thumb knuckle at first swipe.
We were both red inside,
me, the rhubarb.
That’s the stuff I didn’t really think about at ten,
how everything bleeds;
how everything must die somehow—
the stupid ones poisoned, the hard workers
heart-worn and wrecked.

We ate the rhubarb raw, stripped of all its leaves.
Dipped in sugar, it still lingered
bitter on our tongues as some inoculation
against the worst of what was yet to come.
~Matthew Burns from “Rhubarb”

Over the last two weeks, the garden is slowly reviving, and rhubarb “brains” have been among the first to appear from the garden soil, wrinkled and folded, opening full of potential, “thinking” their way into the April sunlight.

Here I am, wishing my own brain could similarly rise brand new and tender every spring from the dust rather than leathery and weather-toughened, harboring the same old thoughts and patterns. Indeed, more wrinkles accumulate on the outside of my skull rather than the inside.

Still, I’m encouraged by my rhubarb cousin’s return every April. Like me, it may be a little sour in need of some sweetening, but its blood courses bright red and it is very very much alive.

and just because this is fun but has nothing to do with rhubarb…

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A Lily Shivering

April 6, 2026 barnstormingblog3 Comments

A lily shivered
at His passing,
supposing Him to be
the Gardener.
~Margaret D. Smith “Easter morning, yesterday”
from A Widening Light -Poems of the Incarnation

It’s so easy to look and see what we pass through in this world, but we don’t. If you’re like me, you see so little. You see what you expect to see rather than what’s there.
~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?”
They knew it was the Lord.
John 21:12

It is too easy, by the next day, to let go of Easter — to slide back into the Monday routine, managing our best to get through each day, our jaws set, our teeth gritted, as we have before.

We are blinded by our grief, shivering in misery, thinking Him merely a Gardener as He passed by. We don’t pay attention to Who is right before us, Who is always tending us: the new Adam, caring for a world desperate for rescue.

God knows this about us. So He invites us to breakfast on Monday and every day thereafter.

He feeds us, a tangible and meaningful act of nourishing us in our most basic human needs though we’ve done nothing to deserve the gift. He cooks up fish on a beach at dawn and welcomes us to join Him, as if nothing extraordinary has just happened.

Just yesterday evening he reviewed His Word and broke bread in Emmaus, opening the eyes and hearts of those like us who failed to see Who this is walking beside them.

This is no ordinary Gardener – He is the one who created the original Garden, and as His image bearers, we humans were meant to maintain and grow it.

When He offers up a meal of His Word, His gift is nothing less than Himself.

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Glimpsing Eden

February 3, 2026 barnstormingblog2 Comments

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home
– dear and familiar stone hearth and garden –
and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone To Talk

We all long for Eden,
and we are constantly glimpsing it:
our whole nature
at its best and least corrupted,
its gentlest and most human,
is still soaked with the sense of exile.
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air
would coil about them for a second.
Grey damp would be around them, and the sun,
a copper penny, would fade away.
The wings next to their own wings
would shade into vacancy,
until each bird was a lonely sound
in cold annihilation,
a presence after uncertain.
And there they would hang in chartless nothing,
seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom,
until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed
and the serpents writhed.
Then, in a moment of time,
they would be in the jewelled world once more:
a sea under them like turquoise
and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created,
with the dew of Eden not yet dry.
~T.H. White from The Once and Future King

The Lord your God is with you,
    the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
    in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
    but will rejoice over you with singing.
I will rescue the lame;
    I will gather the exiles.
I will give them praise and honor
    in every land where they have suffered shame.
At that time I will gather you;
    at that time I will bring you home.
Zephaniah 3: 17, 19-20

I, like everyone on this earth,
am only a sojourner,
seemingly settled, yet certainly not lasting.
As a garden flourishes in the dew and then dies back,
so will I.

This is exile in the wilderness
until we are taken back home.
He has sent His Son to fetch us.

Home. Really home.
A place of no fading or withering.

Each of us etched on His heart,
created in His image,
held fast in His Hand,
and led back home.

Lyrics:

The barren land around me lies
My flame is burning low
Cold and pale the winter skies
And I am far from home.
With my light that burns so dim,
Am I visible to Him?
Does He hear the fragile song of creatures here below?

He wakes the lark and bids her fly
To greet the coming spring,
Wakes our hearts and bids us rise
Then gives our spirits wing.
He speaks, and winter melts away,
Hears us when we come to pray,
Turns our nighttime into day –
Our Light, our Life, our King.

Glorious joy of summer sun,
The gentle healing rain,
Banishing our tears and sighs,
With beauty for our pain.
Earth and sky, lay glory by-
Christ the Lord is drawing nigh!
All creation, bow to Him
From whom all blessings flow!

Blows the wind, and soon will come
The autumn of the year
With its golden light of love
Still shining ever clear.
From the rising of the sun
To the place where day is done,
Peace on earth has now begun
To cast away our fear.
-Johanna Anderson, 2018

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Love Without Hesitation

October 5, 2025 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Every morning I walk through folds of fields
searching.

Slants of sun
sink through triangled bones of leaves:
bold cold refuted.

Sparrows flutter warm in given nests,
ungriefed,
caught,
sustained by common grace.

Faith is the tenderness of banked coals in a grate,
Braeburn apples on a windowsill,
winding crisp with possibility.
The steadiness of conversations embered over decades;
a fire that has never left off crackling –
on this my soul has warmed her hands.

Divine ardor:
too strong and sweet
for the many years I’ve walked on earth.

Love without hesitation has swept my floorboards for seasons.
Deep and longing in and out of time the soul reaches out –
and He, grasps entire.
Hold – and tender.
Incandescent.
~Claire Hellar “A Search in Autumn”

This time of year a chill is in the air,
urging us to feed the embers still throwing heat.

Warmed while eating a meal
together with decades-long friends,
everything grown from our own farms and gardens,
prepared with care and gratitude.

A shared gathering of words and food
in the waning softness of autumn;
we grow older round the table,
incandescent with grace,
a blessed communion.

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Each Petal a Hymn

September 20, 2025September 20, 2025 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Something about the relentless beauty
of the dahlias this year makes me forget
lists and calls and news and aches as
I stand beside them in a splendor stupor,
watching them bloom in real time, not
wanting to miss a moment of the long stems
rising, the red color deepening then fading
from the petals as they age. I imagine a time lapse
begins, and the world’s winter white, then greening
again, and now a hundred years pass,
now five hundred, a thousand, and the garden
bed is gone and the fence is gone and
the trees and the ditch and the home
are gone, and there’s no way to know
this was once a place where dahlias grew.
Is it any wonder, then, I call to you, ask you
to come stand here with me to watch
the dahlias open themselves to the sun,
each petal a hymn to the present,
a history soon to be forgotten, a shimmer in time
we might put in a vase and marvel as
all around it the whole world spins.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “A Scrap in Time”

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon…

The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

Home is where one starts from.

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
~T. S. Eliot, verses from “East Coker” in Four Quartets

What a pity flowers can utter no sound!
—A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle…
oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!
~Henry Ward Beecher

A flower garden is a place for prayer and hymns of praise.

When I meet a truly great gardener, like my friend Jean who has grown and hybridized dahlias, what I see growing in the soil is a choral composition of petals, leaves and roots.

Jean has passionately cared for these plants for many of her nine decades of life. They reflect that love in every spiral and swirl, hue and gradient of color, showing stark symmetry and delightful variegation.

Arising from the plainest of homely and knobby look-alike tubers grow these luxurious beauties of infinite variety. I am stunned by each one, captivated, realizing that same Creator ensures we too bloom from mere dust, becoming a hymn of praise arising from every fiber of our being.

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Each Bright Drupelet

August 3, 2025 barnstormingblog1 Comment

I eat these
wild red raspberries
still warm from the sun
and smelling faintly of jewelweed
in memory of my father

tucking the napkin
under his chin and bending
over an ironstone bowl
of the bright drupelets
awash in cream

my father
with the sigh of a man
who has seen all and been redeemed
said time after time
as he lifted his spoon

men kill for this.
~Maxine Kumin “Appetite” from Selected Poems: 1960-1990

I’ve always wondered if there was a name
for the small round globe, part of an aggregate berry
like a thimbleberry, raspberry or blackberry –
each so smooth and perfectly formed,
each unique yet a homogenous part of the whole.
Yet if separated all by itself, nearly invisible.

Each is called a small drupe,
or more familiar and lovingly, a drupelet.

Despite such a plain name,
a little drupelet has its own smooth shiny beauty,
a drop of flavor to be savored, unforgotten,
made sweeter by being part of the whole –
even sweeter when redeemed and consumed.

Kind of like us –
each of us a small part of the whole of life –
each sacrificed for a taste of eternity.

Kind of like us…

Lyrics: I am a small part of the world
I have a small hand which to hold
But if I stand by your side
And you put your hand in mine
Together we can be so strong and bold

I am a small part of the world
I have a small dream in my eyes
But if I tell you my dreams
And you add your dreams to mine
Together we can reach up to the skies

Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice, together for all time
Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice, for all time

I am a small part of the world
I have a small voice ringing clear
But if I sing out for freedom
And you add your voice to mine

Hand in hand, dreams combine
Voice with voice for all time
I am a small part of the world
Take my hand

Writer(s): Jay Althouse, Sally Albrecht

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The Bees of the Invisible

July 24, 2025 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Let us go forward quietly,
forever making for the light,
and lifting up our hearts in the knowledge
that we are as others are
(and that others are as we are),
and that it is right to love one another
in the best possible way –
believing all things,
hoping for all things,
and enduring all things.
~Vincent Van Gogh from a Letter to Theo Van Gogh – 3 April 1878

I have lived so long
On the cold hills alone . . .
I loved the rock
And the lean pine trees,
Hated the life in the turfy meadow,
Hated the heavy, sensuous bees.
I have lived so long
Under the high monotony of starry skies,
I am so cased about
With the clean wind and the cold nights,
People will not let me in
To their warm gardens
Full of bees.
~Janet Loxley Lewis “Austerity”

Everywhere transience is plunging into the depths of Being.
It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth
into ourselves, so deeply, so painfully and passionately,
that its essence can rise again, invisible, inside of us.
We are the bees of the invisible.
We wildly collect the honey of the visible,
to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
~Rainier Maria Rilke in a letter to his friend Witold Hulewicz, 1925

I am convinced,
reading the news,
too many people are forced to survive
in a world cold and cruel,
without warmth or safety,
too many empty stomachs,
no healing hands for injury or disease.

Our country was trying to help
up until the last few months
when so much has been pulled away.

No longer are we, the helper bees, sent to the invisible,
bringing tangible hope and light, food and meds,
to those who have so little.

No longer do we bring collected honey
to the suffering, the ill, the poor and
invisible who share this planet.

Oh Lord, turn us away from such austerity.
Let us not forget how to share
the humming riches of Your warm garden.

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Those Quiet Eyes…

July 18, 2025July 18, 2025 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Who loves the rain
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes,
Him will I follow through the storm;
And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
Who loves the rain,
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes.
~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow of Grace

Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
~Wendell Berry from “There is no going back”

What a wonder I was
when I was young, as I learn
by the stern privilege
of being old: how regardlessly
I stepped the rough pathways
of the hillside woods,
treaded hardly thinking
the tumbled stairways
of the steep streams, and worked
unaching hard days
thoughtful only of the work,
the passing light, the heat, the cool
water I gladly drank.
~Wendell Berry “VII” 2015 from Another Day

Love is a universe beyond
The daylight spending zone:
As one we more abound
Than two alone.
~Wendell Berry “VIII” 2015 from Another Day

Thinking out loud on this day you were born,
I thank God each day
for bringing you to earth
so we could meet,
raise three amazing children,
now six wonderful grandchildren,
and walk this journey together
with pulse and breath and dreams.

The boy you were
became the man you are:
so blessed by God,
so needed by your family, church and community.

You give yourself away every day with such grace.

It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first
and just knew
I’d follow you anywhere
and I have.

In this journey together,
we inhabit each other,
however long may be the road we travel;
you have become the air I breathe,
refreshing, renewing, restoring~~
you are that necessary to me,
and that beloved.

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What is Waiting Behind the Wall

July 16, 2025July 16, 2025 barnstormingblog1 Comment

If ever we see those gardens again,
The summer will be gone—at least our summer.
Some other mockingbird will concertize
Among the mulberries, and other vines
Will climb the high brick wall to disappear.

How many footpaths crossed the old estate—
The gracious acreage of a grander age—
So many trees to kiss or argue under,
And greenery enough for any mood.
What pleasure to be sad in such surroundings.

At least in retrospect. For even sorrow
Seems bearable when studied at a distance,
And if we speak of private suffering,
The pain becomes part of a well-turned tale
Describing someone else who shares our name.

Still, thinking of you, I sometimes play a game.
What if we had walked a different path one day,
Would some small incident have nudged us elsewhere
The way a pebble tossed into a brook
Might change the course a hundred miles downstream?

The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss the cool subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.
~Dana Gioia “The Lost Garden” from Interrogations at Noon.

At present we are on the outside of the world,
the wrong side of the door. . . .
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.
But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling
with the rumour that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

Memory can play tricks,
either smoothing over
the many potholes in the road of life,
or digging the holes so deep,
I fall in and am lost.

Whenever I am feeling regret
for the things I have done,
or all that I have left undone,
I remember I have walked on
paths of beauty beyond imagining.

I wouldn’t change much about what has been,
knowing there is much more beauty to come.

I remember gates and doors I could not open.
Just a peek told me all I needed to know:
there is a hidden, lost garden just waiting,
still blooming, still inspiring, still brimming
full of everything any of us could ever need.

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Warned By Wild Things

July 1, 2025 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Frightening the foliage from its sleep, we travel along
the Quinault Lake Loop in our big red truck.

Roofed by dank rainforest, we know
we are not alone, though we see no bird, no beast.

You say, It’s beautiful, but do we really belong here
where creatures hide? Then an elk herd stomps across

the dirt road, and you brake, shocked. The fattest turns
to stare over his long beard. To know or warn us.

Yes, my love, we belong, but on soil-stained knees,
asking for each wild thing’s consent to stand.
~Lauren Davis, Home Beneath the Church

I’ve been to the temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula,
only a short ferry ride and two hour drive away,
where 300 year old trees tethered to one another
with connecting crepe of dangling moss,
hiding the creatures within,
taking all down with them
if they someday fall to the wind,
lying still, nursing the growth of the next generation’s seeds
from long rotting trunks.

We can only pass through this place,
having been banished from the Garden.

We are not to dwell or cut or shoot or burn or slash,
at risk of being ensnared by reaching fingers of moss
seeking yet another woody heart to soften

Whispering grassfeet
steal through us
fir-fingers touch one another
where the paths meet
thick dripping resin
glues us together
summer-greedy woodpeckers
hammer at hardy
seed-hiding hearts
~Inger Christensen trans. Susanna Nied

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