Life Began in a Garden

"The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." -Genesis 2:15 (NIV)

Along our driveway this little purple wild flower blooms every spring at the base of a huge oak tree.  A very delicate, tiny flower, it has to force its way up through some of the worst rocky soil I have ever seen.  I so admire those little blooms that grow in difficult and unexpected places with no help from an earthly gardener.

No, this little flower most certainly would not want any help from me even though I consider myself a flower gardener of sorts.  Not a master gardener, nor a horticulture expert.  My gardening “expertise” comes from 20+ years in the School of Gardening Mistakes.  I’ve done it all.  Planted shade flowers in the broiling sun and visa versa.  I’ve water-logged my flowers and also had them dying of thirst.  I’ve innocently planted invasive flowering plants that choked every other plant around them.  I’ve planted bulbs too shallow or too deep.  Yes, I’ve planted some of those poor bulbs upside down.  My gardening mistakes could fill volumes. 

My flower garden probably doesn’t even qualify as a “garden” because there was never a plan. It was more a product of me saying, “There’s a spot of ground. I’ll plant it there!”  Southern Living magazine would never, ever feature the results of my hodge-podge gardening technique.  No way.  No how.

Someone once told me that a gardener never grows up because they still like to play in the dirt.  That’s me.  My garden (of sorts) is my happy place.  Yet it is also my place of peace.  It’s there that I remember that God made the first garden and brought to life the first man to tend that garden in Eden, a garden of unimaginable beauty.  When I am on my knees weeding or digging in the dirt, in my heart I am humbled before God.  Each gardening season I know that I am still learning through my mistakes for He has said, ”Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee."  -Job 12:8

[Note:  Image taken by Patricia Montgomery in April 2013; post processed to add a painterly effect.]