My Garden

Sometimes, the moon aligns just right with the stars, and the rain is plentiful, and the sun shines just enough. It's in these rare moments that my garden seems to flourish. I fancy myself a gardener, but in reality, I'm just a slave to the elements. I can prune my plants, fertilize them, water them, but if Mother Nature doesn't agree with me, the flowers just don't thrive.

This year was different. We had an amazing start to the summer. The temperature was cool and the rain was abundant, sometimes to the chagrin of the farmers in our area. But just when we thought we were going to float away, the sun would come out to dry everything up just in time for the next big rain. In this environment, my garden has flourished. In most parts of my yard, the landscape is very manicured and planned. Picture lots of boxwood hedges, hydrangeas, roses and ornamental trees. It tends to blend in with all the neighbors' yards. Beautiful but somewhat bland.

But in one small terraced bed on my side yard, I leave everything a little more to chance. I have packed this bed full of so many perennials, I can't remember some of their names. In fact, I occasionally find a few that I don't remember planting at all. This is by far my favorite bed. I see it every day when I come out my side door or when I pull up into my driveway. And it's always changing. It's filled with blooming foxglove and columbine in the Spring; daisies, black-eyed Susans and cardinal flower in the Summer; and Autumn Joy sedum and some kind of little blue flower in the Fall. See, I told you I didn't know all the names! No matter what time of year you look at it, there is always something bursting into new color. I also keep my bird feeder there so that my little feathered friends can enjoy the view. But my freakish fascination with them is for a whole other blog!

This bed has been a labor of trial and error. Like I said earlier, my green thumb does not come naturally. I am more of the mindset that if a plant can't make it in my lovely clay soil without a lot of babying, then it doesn't need to be in my garden. I just don't have a lot of extra time to be nurturing these plants along. My hands are full doing that inside the house for my kids. These plants are hearty, self-sufficient and delightfully prolific. It took six full growing seasons to finally fill this bed, but it was worth every minute.

So take a moment to enjoy the vista that I see every day. I wish the picture could capture the breathtaking mix of colors, but there is just so much that a camera can do to reproduce the colors that God created. He has such an amazing palette. And we are so fortunate to be able to sit down for a moment and just look at His wonderful work.