Memorial Day weekend is a sort of season opener for gardeners. So with the holiday past and gardening now in full swing, do the weeds seem to be winning? The best defense is a good offense, many sportsmen would say, and on this premise any gardener hoping for weed-free flower beds will plant Artemisia, member […]
My acquaintance with bay leaves began by way of cooking. My mother introduced us when I was young by seasoning her vermouth broth with the savory leaves when serving Dungeness crab, a delicious winter dinner when the season peaks for those living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn’t connect the herbal leaves to […]
1. Rest. Everything that fills a garden need not be green or growing; sometimes a moment of rest is the best occupation for a certain spot. A break from the flow of foliage, a pause in the posies, gives a breather, both to those working and those viewing the garden. Musicians know this, holding back […]
How wonderful the infusion of scent, beauty and blooms to the frazzle of my day! Take me away, dear garden, dear God; refresh me in the reality of your ways and breakthrough webs of worry with your brilliance. Our daughter was headed home from her college semester, and I wanted to greet her with the […]
Time to sow vegetable garden seeds, indoors in seed pots for those of you with a few more weeks of freeze-worry, or directly in the garden for those of us in the free abandon of spring. The National Garden Bureau has declared 2014 the Year of the Cucumber. Last summer was our first try at the […]
Today I woke up with worry…how you must hate to see your saints waking up with worry, O God! How many times you tell me not to worry and how many flowers you have grown to remind me. The earth is covered with wildflowers, a special species for nearly every region, and by planting them in […]
Today is the release day for the NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible and what better way to celebrate a gardening book’s spring debut than a devotion celebrating spring! Enjoy this excerpt from the Seasons theme, the first week of daily readings in the Garden Stories section. Read: Job 42:5 Thicken the Plot: Psalm 27:14; […]
Late winter snowstorms are more likely to cause a sneer than a smile—March madness of another sort! The snow that added calm delight to Christmastime and those January cup-of-tea-browsing-seed-catalogs-by-the-fire moments now feels infuriating. It stands in the way of all that we hope to sow, grow and bloom as soon as the nuisance of the […]
Leafed out! What are you doing, little pomegranate tree?! I brought you inside to shelter you from the polar vortex gusting into your new garden home—but you’ve mistaken what I consider to be a drafty, north-faced living room for a cool spring invitation to burst with life. O dear! Now added to my seemingly eternal […]
Hyssop began it all for me, my unexpected new life of gardening with God’s Word. First I read about being cleansed by a plant (Psalm 51:7), which prompted me to research and discover it is part of the mint family. That made sense somehow! Next I noticed that hyssop was often paired with scent-filled cedar (1 Kings 4:33), […]
