Mary, Mary, quite contrary

I don't think of myself as the type of person who communes with nature, but there are things that speak to me in nature.

There are a couple of things in nature that I truly love. Well, many things I love but a few things I especially love. Crocuses are my harbinger of spring. They tell me that no matter how cold, dead and unlikely life may appear to be, verdant growth is just around the corner.

It reminds me of a bible passage, While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Noah had just grounded the Ark, and looked out on a world that was probably as grim as anyone had ever imagined, let alone seen, especially coming on the heels of a newly minted world, or relatively so, which he had left before boarding the Ark. How could he have imagined that ANYTHING would grow in the world in which he now stood?

But the very next verse is God telling Noah to go do exactly that: And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

Every winter I look at the dirt, and the dead stems and I remember that where there does not appear to be life, a miracle is about to take place. Life, hope are intertwined threads of the same rope.

So crocuses are my little gift from God to remind me that there is always hope.

Heather is a plant which grows well in all kinds of, but especially rocky, acidic pretty much crappy soil, where other things don't grow. It might do fine in a garden but it survives in the wild, in the remote uncultivated areas that other things don't grow in. It isn't the biggest, prettiest or the most flashy of flowers, but it brings beauty in places that would be otherwise barren, and it's own beauty is perhaps understated. You have to get up close to it to see it's detail, from a distance it looks a lot like sage, a purply green hazy carpet. It is a thing of beauty in a sometimes, otherwise harsh world.

So, how does my garden grow? It grows very well, thank you. My neighbor watches over it also and every once in a while I find little things she has brought over and planted.

some of my lettuces in the shadow of Franken-flower
A better view of the whole thing, with Franken-flower standing tall. The creepers are creeping, the bloomers are blooming and the others are just trying to get some air.