Gardening | dual personalities

April 15, 2025

Olive shoots around your table

by chuckofish

Isn’t it nice to be home?

It is lovely to sit on my own patio…

…and contemplate the lush green grass–which won’t last, I know–

…but it sure is beautiful now! Even on an overcast and cloudy day.

I have a lot on my “to do” list this week what with getting the Review to the printer and the house ready for visitors this weekend. We are going over to the boy and daughter #3’s house for Easter, so at least I don’t have to prepare a big meal. Lottie has told me several times that it is a very special Big Deal that we are coming over for Easter. I am most appreciative. We are also going over to daughter #1’s house for my birthday/daughter #2’s birthday celebration. What a blessing to have my sweet family close at hand!

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
    who walks in his ways!
²You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
    you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.

³Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
    within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
    around your table.
⁴Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
    who fears the Lord.

⁵The Lord bless you from Zion!
    May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
    all the days of your life!
⁶May you see your children’s children!
    Peace be upon Israel!

–Psalm 128

I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the Masters this year, but I was happy that Rory McIlroy finally won. He has had a difficult few years and I’m glad he pulled it together! Golf is such a difficult mind-game. I got a big kick out of 4-year old Katie’s reaction to his win:

Here are 40 random pieces of advice from Tim Challies which I like a lot. Such as: “Sing loud in church, especially if you are a man. Don’t be content with mumbling as if it’s somehow embarrassing to have a male voice.” I totally agree!

And remember:

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May 11, 2022

“Therefore by their fruits you will know them”*

by chuckofish

It is hot and sultry in flyover country. (Too hot.) The first of the iris are starting to pop…

…and the rest will soon follow suit…

Don sent this picture of a Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) or wood poppy, a Missouri native that usually flowers for over a month…

…and these wise words:

The celandine poppy has taught me more about gardening than any other plant. I have planted it in multiple places in my garden over a 30 year time period. What I have learned is that plants thrive where the conditions suit them. It kept disappearing in places that I thought would be perfect. Finally I put it in a spot that supports its growth. Now it grows so well on its own that I have forgotten that it is there. People are like that too.

People are like that!

You have brought a vine out of Egypt;
You have cast out the nations, and planted it.
⁹You prepared room for it,
And caused it to take deep root,
And it filled the land.
¹⁰The hills were covered with its shadow,
And the mighty cedars with its boughs.
¹¹She sent out her boughs to the Sea,
And her branches to the River.
–Psalm 80: 8-11

*Matthew 7: 20

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June 15, 2015

“I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.”*

by chuckofish

It’s tiger lily time in flyover country again. How I do love these hardy and sun-loving plants!

Everyone, especially Till Eulenspiegel, is happy to see them. Also newly arrived is the Photuris lucicrescens (or firefly) in the foreground of this photo. We call them lightning bugs in this neck of the woods.

All of these things trumpet the arrival of full-fledged summer here. The temperatures have soared and the humidity has climbed. C’est la vie.

In church on Sunday there were many allusions to gardening in the scripture readings–from Ezekiel where the LORD talks about planting cedars on the mountain top of Israel, to Paul writing the Corinthians that “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” In the Gospel lesson (Mark 4:26-34) Jesus says,

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

I usually let my garden go when it gets too hot (as it does here)–thank goodness for English ivy and potted geraniums!–but this year I am going to try to keep my interest from flagging. We’ll see.

Anyway, here’s a thought for Monday:

“All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.”

― John Lubbock

*Ezekiel 17:23

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May 8, 2014

A hill of beans

by chuckofish

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

–Henry David Thoreau

Well, I know just what old Thoreau is talking about. Do you?

I go out to see if my pumpkin plants are still where I planted them every morning and then again when I come home from work.

The OM says, ironically, “Are they still there?” But I am worried about them! My past experience teaches me that their chances are not particularly good. Pesky garden varmints enjoy digging around in this bed, but so far so good.

I love this time of year though, don’t you?

When the plants are just starting to come up and the weeds and violets and creeping vines have not taken over.

peony buds

The first rose bud

When insect life is minimal. When it is still cool enough to enjoy my time in the yard. I admit I lose interest quickly when our flyover temperatures soar. I am a fair-weather gardener.

But you know how my mind works. Thoreau’s quote got me thinking about “a hill of beans” and how that expression became a synonym for something of negligible importance or value. I wonder how that came to be the case? Anyway, this made me think of that famous scene at the end of Casablanca, when Rick says to Ilsa: “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that…”

Yeats, you recall, wanted “Nine bean-rows” and “a hive for the honey-bee” in his Innisfree home.

Hmmm. If my pumpkins amount to even a hill of beans this year, maybe next year I’ll plant some beans.

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March 30, 2012

You can see it in the trees; You can smell it in the breeze

by chuckofish

Here in flyover country we have had one of the warmest Marches on record. The result is an extremely early spring. The bees are a-buzzin’! Dandelions are appearing! Zut alors!