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| Bilbo the Hobbit |
"Gandalf: Always remember Bilbo, when your heart wants lifting, think of pleasant things... Bilbo: Eggs and bacon. A good, full pipe. My garden at twilight."
Just as my need for fresh coffee took over, Ranger Bob knocked on the door and brought Sassy out of her rest barking in excitement.
It was late afternoon and the sky was a dark grey, the air still. We had some Brazilian coffee and crackers outside with Sassy.
Bob was stunned by the Veterans Honor roses in full bloom. Sunny days are great and rare, but the filtered light of the looming storm really lit up the pure red, perfectly formed flowers. He began pointing them out, and I added a few more locations. I only planted Veterans Honor roses this year. Politely, they let Easy Does It have all the glory for Mother's Day.
Bob also has his eye on the Butterfly Weed that grows along the little picket fence in front of the patio. Mrs. Ichabod liked the touch and it does slow down trampling on that row of flowers. Butterfly Weed is slow to develop but the flowers last a long time. This time we have a stately row, tall and starting to bud.
We are in a budding and blooming frenzy. The Elderflowers are turning white. The Triple Crown Blackberries are showing off their white blooms too. New Joe Pye plants are showing their vigor, and the older plants are already 5 feet tall.
I was trying to build a Butterfly Garden on the sunniest side of the house, but it is also where we seldom look. That area is now the site of very large Yarrow plants, Comfrey, Joe Pye, and Chaste Tree - so overall a magnet to all pollinators.
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| Yarrow |
Partial sun will grow almost anything, so the butterfly concept - where we might actually see them - was added to the Rose Garden. The view from the porch now includes:
- Two Clethra - aka Summer Sweet or Sugar Spice.
- Numerous Joe Pye Weeds
- Butterfly Weed
- Hostas sending up their flower spikes for the Hummingbirds
- Cat Mint
- Pink Neon Spirea bushes
- Bee Balm in vigorous growth, not yet blooming
- Whoops-a-Daisy blooming and Shasta Daisies only starting to grow
I used to wonder how my mother had flowers blooming at all times. Now I realize that if enough flowers are planted, something will be blooming, even at the end of summer (Beauty Berry).
We all look forward to the early spring flowers, but we would be very downcast if they finished in June.
When that party-changing billionaire Bloomberg described how easy farming was, I just laughed. "Drop a seed in the ground and water it." He did not comprehend the predatory nature of birds, rodents, rabbits, squirrels, and man - nor the complexities of fungus, nematodes, springtails, slugs, and weather.
The Garden Path Not Taken
That is why I would prescribe a semester of gardening for all the seminary students and two years of gardening for the synod officials. Mowing the lawn would not count. They would have to treat the soil kindly, improve it Creationally, and grow plants in the midst of hostile forces - man, nature, and Lowe's.
That would teach them the long, patient joy of labor rewarded many times over by the living seed of the Word. They would understand the efficacy of the Word as no different from rain and snow. One morning, when an entire row of seedlings popped out of the ground, they would recall the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly (St. Mark only).
They would go over Luther's sermon on the Parable of the Sower and say to themselves - and others - "Now I see what we have been doing wrong. The old farmers knew this. The older Lutherans like Loy, Reu, Lenski, Passavant, and Krauth lived it. The rain and the snow demonstrate the efficacy of the Word, the divinity of the Word, the exclusive relationship of the Spirit and Word."
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| Triple Crown Blackberries |
