From a Flower-Frilled/Filled Lesson Book

Ps.65:9-13

You [c]visit the earth and water it,

You greatly enrich it;

The river of God is full of water;

You provide their grain,

For so You have prepared it.

10 You water its ridges abundantly,

You settle its furrows;

You make it soft with showers,

You bless its growth.

11 You crown the year with Your goodness,

And Your paths drip with abundance.

12 They drop on the pastures of the wilderness,

And the little hills rejoice on every side.

13 The pastures are clothed with flocks;

The valleys also are covered with grain;

They shout for joy, they also sing.

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Gardening and life are a fine-tuned medley

of deep disappointment and darling delight!

***

Today's post is a medley of garden photos and quotes...

and a poem inspired by garden-blessings...

Long after final fruit is plucked

And cobs are shucked and gourds are gleaned

And herbs are hung to dry on rungs

Indoors, and the last leaf is weaned

Long after flower-stems are stripped

And fronds are clipped and furrows turned

I will reflect, time and again

On garden-lessons I have learned

...of disappointment and delight

For such is life; wonder and woe

Laughter, lament, beauty and blight

Patience, (for plants take time to grow)

…learning, that love is worth the years

Of work, of Waiting‘s by-and-by

That gladness grows sweeter through tears

Perfection, more than meets the eye

That it takes both the sun and rain

To make Growing Things flourish, oh

That life mingles pleasure and pain

Into love’s vintage afterglow

...that without the wise purpose of

The careful, cruel pruning knife

The plant will not be strong enough

To bear the waiting weight of life

  

Long after kale's last curl is culled

And frost, its temp’ring touch has wrought

I will remain humbly thankful

For lessons that my garden taught

...not in some, brick-walled lecture hall

But in a sun and breeze-kissed nook

Where crickets cheep and petals fall

From a flower-frilled lesson-book

© Janet Martin