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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday August 20, 2001 Volume III Number 34 |
FOCUS - Roots
I’m still not sure what got me interested in gardens.
I’ve always enjoyed a well-manicured park bursting with springtime color. My grandmother was a Brit. All ninety-five pounds of her. Whenever the Queen of England makes an appearance, it’s as though Grandma Dorothy is alive again. Her voice, her manner. Her posture. Her reserve.
The English are passionate about their gardens. As a little boy in Chicago, I remember the springtime walks though the roses and hedgerows and the lilies and daffodils. And Grandmother had a spring in her step and a lilt in her voice that matched the blossoms and the deep greens in the leaves and the lawn and the clover. I didn’t realize then that this Public Garden was a transplant from England until we visited London. Just around the corner from our Hotel we strolled through Regent’s Park, said to be the Queen’s favorite. Through a jet black wrought iron gate and archway and under the Royal Insignia, glimmering gold in the sunlight, you enter another world, a world of tranquility, as the sound of roaring diesel engines and honking horns and city bells and sirens grow faint, through the weeping willows and great oaks around the bend where the gentle swans swim in the pond by the lily pads and a walking bridge takes you to the rose garden with every variety marked on a monogrammed name plate. Beside the rose named the “Princess Diana” was my personal favorite, the “Sexy Rexy.”
When
we visited Victoria in British Columbia, we made the stop at Butchart.
These magnificent gardens are the pride of Canada, and keep one hundred
fifty gardeners busy, full time.
For eighteen years, we lived in a Southern California tract house. A planned community. With “green-belts” and common areas. We paid a monthly fee to have someone else do the maintenance. But our lot was just about large enough for the concrete footprint of our two-story house. No more. The architect carefully designed each house so that no windows were installed on the same side as your neighbor’s. Such an oversight would have been disastrous because from the second story, you could easily reach across the property line through those windows to shake hands with the person dwelling next to you. Good-bye privacy. So your side windows looked out on the blank stucco wall of the house next door. He looked through his on the other side. There was just about enough room between the houses to roll your trash bins from the back to the front. That was about it.
But somehow, that postage stamp sized lot seemed monumental to me. Planting wasn’t even a consideration. Watering. Feeding. Pruning. Just didn’t happen. I hired a guy to cut my grass every week. Took him ten minutes. Maybe I was just too busy getting my career going. Maybe the demands of young children were a distraction. Maybe I was just plain lazy.
But that poor yard suffered neglect, tended only by Carolyn who when she worked outside, toiled alone.
These past three years have been a transformation. I still have a great deal to learn. And to do. But you’ll find me out there most every weekend, working the soil and planting and pruning and weeding and cutting.
It may well be because the children are grown. Or that the distance between our house and our neighbor’s is considerably greater than before. Or it may be the book I read on the clear but often overlooked connection between gardening and spirituality. Maybe I discovered, quite by accident, that marriage is more fun when you work together.
Whatever, I’m learning why Grandmother Dorothy had springtime in her voice when she walked through a well-kept garden.
You just may hear it in mine.
* * * * * * * *
Three years ago, when we first went shopping for plants, I discovered that my tastes were decidedly different from Carolyn’s. I was drawn to the bright colors… marigolds, petunias, pansies, daisy bush, that sort of thing. I liked the idea of instant color; plant and show.
Carolyn would shake her head. “Those are annuals,” she would say. “I like perennials.”
At the time, this concept went right over my head. I’d look at the plants she had in mind, and I’d ask, “When will that one bloom?”
She would say, “it has a beautiful bloom… in its time.”
Now, three years later, I’m beginning to understand. Those annuals of mine, which I bought by the flat, looked fantastic the moment we put them in the ground. Then about a week later, depending on the soil and the snails and the irrigation, they generally looked like they were in shock. The color went dull; brown appeared around the edges, and then a little drooping of the leaves. But in a week or two, most of them would “take” and for a couple months, flower into brilliant color and with a little nutrient, multiply and expand and fill up their little corner with splendor.
But sixty to ninety days was just about the total life span of my annuals. By then, they looked tired. They were loosing their battle with the sun. The green stems and leaves tinged and dried, cracking at the edges; the flowers limp, color fading. And in another month, my annuals looked like dried up weeds.
Carolyn’s perennials, on the other hand, took time to root. In the first season, blossoms were few. The plants looked scraggly and thin. Then a year later, it would fill in and take shape, and in the springtime, a wonderful blossom burst forth and attracted the bees and celebrated the sun. The bloom would last, and the green leaves, too. And in the third year, those perennials matured. They became a favorite part of the landscape.
While I tore out my annuals two or three times a year to start over with a new load of colorful store bought flats, Carolyn’s perennials just kept on yielding their beauty, and all they needed was trimming.
It occurred to me that this annual/perennial thing is kind of a male/female thing. You know, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” Us guys go for instant gratification. Women tend to prefer long-term security. In the kitchen, men are like microwaves. Women like crock-pots.
In the garden, men go for annuals.
But now, I’m learning to appreciate perennials.
* * * * * * *
Roots are a favorite Bible word picture.
When the prophet Isaiah lamented the disillusionment of the House of Judah, he relayed a word from God himself. He imagined a day when Israel would again be restored. It seemed then a distant hope. Judah had been decimated by Assyria, and then taken captive by Babylonia. Yet, Isaiah told of a day when the nation would become a source of joy and wonder for the entire world.
He said it would be the signaled by appearance of a shoot. A blade. Coming from a simple root.
He said it would be root coming from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was David’s father. Isaiah said that root would blossom, and bud, and fill all the world with fruit. It was a grand prediction.
TIME Magazine published a dramatic photograph just after the devastation following the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s in 1980. Hundreds of square miles were covered with gray ash, the blast knocked down entire forests, burned and scorched fields looked like the lunar surface, rivers went dry, as though life itself had been entirely eliminated in one horrific moment when fiery gasses belched out from the center of the earth.
The photo captured the gray landscape, eerily silent, under a clear blue sky, just days later. And in the foreground, a lone shoot, a green blade, reached through the ash, skyward, sought the sunlight.
It was only the beginning. Twenty years later, the mountain is green again.
It reminded me then of Isaiah’s vision. Out of the awful rubble of Israel’s demise was a promise. And Isaiah predicted that this green shoot, this root of Jesse, would restore the nation’s place in the world.
Every time a green shoot pierces through the surface of the soil into the sun-soaked atmosphere, and drops its roots deep into the soil for water and nutrients, and then grows branches and leaves and blossoms… I’m reminded once more that hope remains.
Maybe that’s why gardens work wonders.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Maybe you remember walks in an English Garden. You knew somehow that these rows and pathways and ponds and blossoms represented a unique partnership between God and man. A person created the overall design, and labored long and hard. But it was God who brought life to the flowers and shrubs, and he gave the gift of color and fragrance and delicate detail.
Rudyard Kipling captured it in his rhyme –
Our
England is a Garden, and such gardens are not made,
By
singing “Oh how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade.
It might be a good time to find another, and take a walk. Better, a stroll. Let the garden speak.
It may also be that you’ve experienced some kind of upheaval in your life. Perhaps on the scale of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helen’s. Remember the green shoot, the irrepressible blade, the evidence that life goes on. It’s God’s gift of hope.
Your life will be green again.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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