The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. ~George Bernard Shaw

“I believe that gardens themselves are very healing. To be surrounded by the exquisite beauty of nature is to experience a healing of the soul.” — Author unknown

It’s gorgeous in the Shenandoah Valley now, and today a soft April shower is making everything even that much greener. The jonquils are in bloom and tulips just beginning to flower with the promise of many more buds. I’ve ordered several new David Austin roses to add to the roses that survived the winter (mostly Austin varieties so I’m sticking with those from now on), and the greenhouse is filled with seedlings for the vegetable, herb, and flower gardens. What wealth, if you count your riches in the bounties of the earth, and I do. I particularly love seeds. Each one holds such potential.

There is much symbolism in seeds. Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” And mustard seeds are tiny. I ought to be able to manage that much faith…

Daughter Elise and I save seed, and get carried away ordering more, but use them all sooner or later. And we share. A  box of filled with ziplock bags laden with various kinds of seeds (I endeavored to  organize them into categories) sits under my coffee table by the couch as I write. That way, I can sort through them at any time, know what I have and need. And I just like having them nearby. The table itself is laden with gardening and herbal   books and seed catalogues…I’m seeing a pattern here.

“How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

“Almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise.” — Henry Mitchell

“Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.”  ~Robert Brault

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.”
~Dorothy Frances Gurney, “Garden Thoughts”

Hark the Harry Angels Sing

Back when my all grown up with children of his own son was ‘wee little,’ as the country folk around here say, he thought we were singing about ‘Harry’ angels.      Another child assumed the angel’s name was Harold.  Perfectly understandable.   The lyrics are rather unfathomable to children.  Even for some adults. I’ve also heard of a child who mistook ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ for ‘sleep in heavenly peas,’  which makes sense with the emphasis on eating your vegetables.

Last Christmas, my then three-yr-old grandson Colin  freaked out and was hiding his toys because he was afraid Santa Claus snuck into your house on Christmas Eve and took all of your stuff.  We think this misapprehension came about as a result of watching the cartoon version of ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas.’    Colin also didn’t like the idea of some strange dude who ‘sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake’ watching him.  Like Santa was a creepy stalker.  His weary parents in their efforts to reassure him (and get any sleep) said they would  post a note on the mailbox advising Santa to leave the goods in the driveway.   Colin accepted this but was still rather leery.

He was also really put out when told that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday and insisted ‘that’s not fair!’  When asked why, he said because Jesus gets the best birthday of all.   I’ve never heard  this take before.  But Colin is the same kid who tried to boost his one-yr-old baby sister up onto the picnic table on their deck with the ultimate aim of giving her an even higher boost onto the roof of the house so she could retrieve the action figure toy he’d flung up there.  After all, the baby couldn’t boost him up there, and his mother had warned him if he threw the toy on the roof, it was gone.  So he schemed a way but was intercepted.  Drats, foiled again.

Recently Colin was overhead singing Away in the Mangerto himself with an alteration.  Instead of ‘The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay’ he subbed in ‘batman asleep in the hay.’  He loves action heroes, but this version may come as a surprise during the Children’s Christmas Program next week at church.

Also, at the top of his Christmas list is a ‘real Spiderman’ action figure who shoots out ‘real webs.’  None of that fake silly string stuff like last year.   And his little four-yr-old cousin, my granddaughter Emma, asked me some time ago for a ‘real’ baby dinosaur.   I hate to squash dreams, but pointed out the possible difficulty I foresaw in locating one.  In a dramatic gesture, she threw her hands up and said I had all the way ’til Christmas to find one–that she wasn’t expecting it right away.

Well, Christmas is almost upon us and I’m still short one newly hatched dinosaur and a Spiderman who shoots out real webs.  I suspect this request of Colin’s stems from his desire to swing from them and ‘fwy’ as he pronounces it.  An impossibility for small boys that we’ve failed to persuade him of.  He suggested his mother make him some wings so he could soar off the deck.   I think Santa needs to bring him a large net.

If you know of any real baby dinosaurs, let me know.  I haven’t given up.