I’m a gardener, always have been. I’m not a landscape architect, horticulturalist or botanist. I am also not an English major or a theologian. I am simply a woman who tries to find the Creator in his creation. To listen for that whisper of His will as I scrabble among the weeds.
Being called a writer, and now an author, is still foreign to my ears. I’ve put words on paper or written a journal on and off for most of my life. I figured out somewhere in third grade that words made sentences that made pictures that added color to my world. And my world as a child needed color…I’m from Detroit
Somehow in those formative years I fell in love with creation. My first memory of plants came as a small child lying with my Irish grandfather on the lawn, and being fascinated by the bright yellow flowers of Creeping Buttercup. I remember my father’s greenhouses, over an acre under glass, and the thousands of commercially grown chrysanthemums with each flower exactly the same size, shape and height as its neighbor.
I can still recall my first encounter when I was about six with the sweet fragrance and stunning colors of Iris. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as a wave of fragrance surrounded me. Sniffing the air, I followed my nose. There, just a few houses up, grew a garden filled with fans of blue-green leaves topped with a rainbow of sturdy flowering stalks. The neighbor woman, whose garden it was that I had just invaded, told me they were Bearded Iris and showed me the fluffy beard on the petals. She then gave me a stalk of deep purple blooms that smelled like grape bubblegum. I knew at that moment there was a God and he had me hooked!
As I moved into my fifties, a plummeting economy forced me into unemployment. I spent hours at the Adoration Chapel and even more with a counselor. I had no idea what was to become of me as a single woman without family. I soon learned how desperation deepens faith and dependence on God.
I prayed to God to show me how to use the talents he had given me, even if they weren’t the ones I had developed. I came to understand more clearly what the Irish refer to as that thin place called a garden; where the membrane between us and God is slight. I began gardening with a deeper purpose to serve Him, and writing with the same intention.
I was taken on a journey of reinvention that I could never have imagined. A journey filled with barren mountains and glorious alpine summits, traversing lands so unfamiliar that I didn’t have words to describe my surroundings. I was out of my element and succeeding by Grace alone.
I prayed to God to cooperate more fully with His will. And He took away my trowel, handed me a pen and asked me to grow.
Wow! Amazing words in your entry. 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing with all of us. May God bless you always.
I like your blog! By the way, If u have time, drop by my painting blog. Thanks!.. .daniel
So beautiful. I like your words, Margaret 🙂