What’s In a Garden?

“Who loves a garden
Finds within his soul
Life’s whole;
He hears the anthem of the soil
While ingrates toil;
And sees beyond his little sphere
The waving fronds of heaven, clear.”
-Louise Seymour Jones-

Just spent another morning trimming the patch of blue grass in my small garden. Call it my morning exercise, sweating it out before the sun rises. Since the start of the daily afternoon downpour, I noticed that the grass seem to grow by leaps. I just love the earthly smell of newly trimmed and cut grass, it’s heavenly. I don’t mind getting my fingernails soiled, just holding the rich earth in my hands reminds me of  the beauty of life and God’s creation. It is at this time of the year that my annuals just show their faces and you will be surprised, in a week or two, many shoots have grown.

There is no regular pattern as to what kind of flowers or plants are sown here. I just love the varied mix of annuals and perennials and the different hues of green for my non-flowering plants. In the next few days, I have to move what’s left  of my cacti plants in the shade. They just don’t like too much drenching. There are various seeds of kamantigue, zinnias, butterfly weed and four o-clocks that I still have to plant.

How often do we hear the phrase, ‘take time to smell the flowers’? Gardening is not just a hobby for me, it is also a form of relaxation that nothing on earth could buy, and a garden is a pleasant place to watch things grow, to commune with nature, a place to watch the birds chirp, to think about the the wonders of creation and a place to uplift the soul.