A garden is a lovely picture of faith and works. The gardener pulls on the gloves and tugs the weeds, creates the spaces, designs and builds the decks and the walls. The gardener chooses and plants the plants and feeds and waters. But life and fruitfulness come from the Lord. As the gardener works, the mind dreams and hopes and anticipates the vege harvest. But without the days of sun and rain and the worms turning and munching beneath the earth, little will come of these dreams. Then, on a warm and scented day, the gardener goes out and sees the trees bursting with new buds and flowers promising to unfold in the light of the day. Birds visit and enjoy and are enjoyed as living works of art. Creation never ceasing, repeats its joy at the turning seasons. And the gardener feasts the eye upon the miracle. The fruit of work is met by the fulfilled promise of faith. Work as if tomorrow will be a riot of miraculous change. Prayer is our work sometimes. When life is just too difficult. When sometimes it is hard to motivate to rise from bed and start into another day. Prayer can be an effort. But it is an effort of no less benefit than weeding and planting. We weed the earthly thoughts that tempt us to go under and join the worms of self-pity or doom! We plant praise and thankfulness and hope by acknowledging God and his miracle power. And we are never disappointed. God's life is working despite our despair, fear or even lack of trust. His morning of joy comes after a night of tears.

A welcome garden

I want my garden to be welcoming. I enjoy it. I am sure God enjoys it because I meet with him there regularly. The birds enjoy it, the possums, my dogs, my cat and the neighbour's cat when she can get to hide in the limelight bushes to stalk the birds feeding on the grass. A zillion bugs enjoy it. Nothing is static in a live garden. Even in winter, worms are munching under ground and winter flowers like camellias, azaleas and early cheer are at their best. If I had a garden that was a digital garden made with blocks of colour, mathematically drafted, I could sit back and enjoy my creativity without the challenge of the zillion bugs or the weeds that come from everywhere and nowhere. If I had a garden where I had concreted it over and painted that green, or used artificial grass, or sculptures instead of trees, perhaps, I would have less work? But I would have less life too. I have noticed that the more life and activity there is, the more mess there can be too. And it is hard work making a garden to be that peaceful but live place. My soul is like this too. I want life. And I want to be fruitful with my life. And I want to be welcoming. And I want others to be able to meet with God because they have met me. I want God to enjoy the garden of my life. So, I have to nurture the things that make me fruitful. And wince as God prunes the bits that are dead or unfruitful. And look for weeds in my attitudes and for slugs in my behavior. Hard work. But I would rather be spiritually alive than put in some plastic Christian life that produces nothing. Glory be to God for cockatoos and correllas They make plenty of noise and eat a lot But I'd rather welcome to my garden, these fellas than have a concrete, uninviting plot!

Harlequin bugs

Some very interesting bugs entered by garden. They looked kind of pretty, and more like large lady bugs, so I figured they must be good. Assume the best in everyone! They seemed to breed quickly....

Around the same time, I noticed my passionfruit plant was looking sick along with a few other plants. I thought it was the humid spring and mildew so thought I couldn't do much about it.

Then, I discovered that these cute little bugs that I had been intrigued by were harlequin bugs and that they were culprits. Looking for a way to get rid of them I stumbled across people who called them the evil harlequin bugs from hell. It seems that they are rapid, rabid destroyers. Shame they look so pretty.

Fortunately, it says that soapy water may deal with them. I will have to give it a try.

Sometimes, we don't notice little things, like the Bible talks about, 'the little foxes', little evil harlequin foxes, that look cute. We just kind of turn a blind eye since they don't look very destructive. I sometimes think that the little sentences that are introduced into what should be sound doctrine, can seem like attractive ideas, yet later they have infested our thoughts and minds.

I guess a lot of things would come into that category. Little entertaining pictures or borderline pornography, or little snippets of gossip or ideas that just settle and seem ok. It is not as if we are feeding them. They just don't look like harmful things to start with.

Not all that is pretty is innocent and harmless. Beware the harlequin bug!

I should have looked up what a harlequin was and in Wikipedia, I found:

"The notion that the Harlequin motif grew out of France is evidenced by Hellequin, a stock character in French passion plays. Hellequin, a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell. The physical appearance of Hellequin offers an explanation for the traditional colours of Harlequin's mask (red and black)."

Lucky these sinful little demons may be able to be washed away.

A good reminder to check our thinking. Anything that is a bit suss should be washed away. The hard part is eliminating all the ones hiding under every leaf or sitting too high on a tree, I guess we have to keep at it with our minds and just keep working on winning that battle.

Worm farm

I think my worms are quite happy. Although, when I open the lid of the layered plastic farm, there are often a few renegades waiting as if to find that one moment of escape, right up by the opening. They think that to leave the comfort of my over fed, protected from predators, world that I have created for them, they may find more exciting food or a life in a wider and less restrictive world.

Sometimes, a rare individual, naked and pink fleshed, is prepared to wait it out on the bottom, dank and muddy level of the farm, perhaps in the hope of flowing out with the fertilizer, into a new adventure. I feel slightly angry with them as I scoop their fragile lengths into my caring hands to dump them lovingly back on top of the food mountain I have provided for them on level one. Don't they know, I have created for them the perfect garden of worm Eden?

Poor blind creatures. Probably, most of them smell me coming and hate me for my boundaries. Probably, they hold many worm conversations about how, either I don't exist since they can't see me, or how distant I must be since they have never met me personally, or how cruel I must be for creating so many walls to confine them.

If one slides out in the sludge of water that I harvest out of my farm for enriching my plants, I rescue it. That worm may resent how I will go after it to bring it back when it was so close to freedom. Maybe, one or two are grateful. Maybe as they landed on the soil, they heard a long lost hungry, escapee, deep in the dry ground, wailing that they should never have left the farm.

I try to warn them that it is the broad way that leads to destruction. There are sharp and cruel beaks that will seek them out, once they are away from their home. They will have to hunt and compete for food. Sure, at first it will seem like their options are limitless and joining their wild kind, may seem good to start with.

At the worm clubs, under the compost heap, worms compare stories. "My upbringing was restrictive and stifling". Says a former farm worm. "I have my rights to freedom." Agrees another. "Those farm worms are repressed." Says another. "We are our own gods here!" Boasts a rather elongated and slippery worm.

The days go by and I need soil from the compost. The shovel slices a few unsuspecting worms. Others are tossed as they fall with the rich soil and some land on the top of the vege' garden in full sight of a dozen birds. In my worm farm, a family gathers to enjoy some spring warmth. It is good to start a new day and realise that more scraps of delicious food have arrived. The gardener's mercies are new almost every morning. I am sure these worms who submit to my farm, are gathering to give thanks to their creator’s servant, who looks after them so well.

Bees

One thing is for sure. Each year I learn something more about gardening. I wondered why with all the blossoms this year, I had only a tiny percentage of the fruit in my garden from the year before. My plum tree actually had far more flowers this year, yet only a fraction of the fruit yield. I was perplexed.

A farmer friend solved my puzzle. It wasn't the plant food, or the water, or the sun or the pruning. She asked me how many bees were in my garden this spring. Indeed, a very good question. Not that many. Well, not compared to last year when my neighbour had a wild bee hive growing in the garage on the back of their property.

I had been a bit fazed by the bees. They were swarming in my garden, dive bombing me as I put out the washing. As I am allergic to bees, this became a nuisance and a nightmare. I did feel sorry for them when they were exterminated.

I thought about the person who had discovered a bee hive under their BBQ. They had posted pictures from every angle of the huge honeycomb that hung from the BBQ and dripped honey all over their patio. I wondered if the old couch that had housed the bee hive next door had a honeycomb interior. I never did learn whether it did or not.

Now I know that last year these bees were busy as bees are. Last year they were visiting nectarines, plums and grapes. Last year they helped produce a bumper crop. Well, I can't have it both ways; less bees and less fruit. I do wish wasps had a more productive part in the garden because nothing seems to diminish their presence.

It just goes to show, that often when we are being buzzed by bees, it may be because they are busy working and we are in the way. We only see what we see and experience and often are ungrateful for things simply because they seem to be pests to us. Yet, God has his servants, and his purposes buzzing away, leading us to fruitful seasons up ahead, and we often don't realise that it was those annoying little things that were actually doing us the most good.

You might ask 'like what'? Well for example, ending up with a minor injury in hospital for a day or two. It is painful and inconvenient, but then a person next to you in the bed in the same ward, needs to know something of the love of God and there you are right in the right place after all. Or, smaller still, getting delayed by some annoying telemarketer and heading off into the traffic a few minutes later than you planned. A car accident just up ahead makes you realise, just a few minutes earlier, if you had left on time, that would have been you being cut out of that car. Or some annoying person taking too long to serve you, might just be saving you from being knocked over by a speeding cyclist, who now hits nothing and goes on in the grace of God, on his merry way.

Thanks be to God for bees.

Cherries

Last year, the birds got my three cherries. I had wrapped the tree in bird netting and then noticed one of the cherries as it just came half ripe had disappeared! So I put a double wrap around the tree, but this just gave the birds a stronger toe hold to steal from. I didn't get to try any. Well, I will confess, I did find one cherry half pecked and a bit sizzled by the sun and was so annoyed, I pecked the other side and then dropped it in horror that I had been so desperate for a sample of my first cherries that I could have done such a thing.

First fruits. Well, they went to God's creatures. An offering to God. I often think as I see the little containers that are dappled about on the pavement in places like Bali, about how many of God's creation get to enjoy the offerings laid out for the deities. Sweet cut fruit and scented flowers, within the grasp of a hungry monkey must be such a gift. If I think about my cherries being processed by a thrush or a blackbird on behalf of God, then it isn't quite so bad.

There's nothing like delayed gratification to work character into a person. I never learned that as a young person. But now, I can thank God that I have a chance when I have to wait another year for another hope of tasting a cherry.

But a year has gone by. This time, I learned from my past failure. My cherry tree was bursting with blossoms. So, I bought two huge frames. They were meant to be garden arches. They had to be fitted together and that was no easy task. Then I threw two huge nets over them and pegged them all around the tree. This meant I had purchased, two nets, two arches and several packets of metal pegs. Cost? Maybe $50, if I add it all up.

The flowers dropped their petals and small fruit hung from little clusters on the boughs. But within a few weeks, it became apparent that there were just two cherries. Yes, just two. My huge frame and netting plan was for two cherries. Two cherries, might cost about 10 cents I suppose. But they were my cherries on my tree!

I finally tasted my cherries. I was a little premature, but also nervous that one more day to ripen them just a little more might mean one more day for a wiley bird to figure how to steal them. Life is a cherry they say. And I love cherries and I love a lot of things about life too. And sometimes, life like these cherries, after all the anticipation and best laid plans, just tasted, ok. Not wonderful, not delectible, not bursting with sweet juice and flavour, just ok.

But, it was all still worth it. I cheated the birds and this time, it was my turn to eat the fruit of my labour. Maybe God feels like this, when he waits patiently, tends our souls, guards us, feeds us, gives us living water and then some temptation comes along and steals our hearts. Then he waits again for the right time, and we ripen for his harvest again.

Sometimes, we offer ourselves and it is good, but it is just ok. Sometimes, we offer ourselves and what we give is the best of everything within us. I want to offer the best to him. If my life is a cherry to him, then I want my life to be like those big sweet fruitful ones that I still remember from two years ago from the country stand.

blossoms are hard to predict

Time races by as spring arrives. It is a while since I had time to write anything about my garden. Now the days are warming up, I hope to have much more time to sit in my 'Jesus' tree and contemplate God's greatness and goodness.

Spring arrives with wonderful bursts of leaf and then surprises of poppies and daffodils and freesias that you forgot were there. Trees go the other way around and push out delicate pink or white blossoms and the boronias flower and perfume half the garden while the jasmine completes the fragrance in the other half.

Funny thing, this year, my dwarf nectarine had just one blossom! For the past few years it has been coated in blossoms. Then, most seem to come to nothing and I am lucky if I get two or three small nectarines. I really must think about what that poor tree needs to eat! One blossom! Yet, even more surprising, the one blossom has a nectarine growing! Maybe it will become one very large and healthy one.

My plum tree had more blossoms than ever this year, which caused me to send the fix-it man out to put up poles and erect a shade cloth over the little deck he created last year. That should keep the possum droppings, bird droppings and most of all, half eaten plums and plum residue from all the wild-life I feed from this tree, off the picnic table.

Hundreds more blossoms on the plum tree would surely have meant hundreds more plums. Not so. Last year, it didn’t look like a lot of blossom, yet the tree was laden. My favourite visitor was the bat that came each night and hung upside down munching contentedly away. This year, there are so few plums, my birds and night visitors are going to be a bit disappointed.

Now, to watch the cherry tree and there were lots of blossoms there but so far just a few tiny little growths from them. Well, the bird net is over the tree so maybe this year I might get to taste one, if they grow any bigger.

Some people have lots of words and sound great, but then when you wait to see what kind of spiritual fruit will really grow in their lives, not a lot happens, or it is small or not very sweet. Others, seem to not have much to say, and not much fussing, yet suddenly you notice they are full of sweet spiritual fruit and they are able to feed lots of hungry souls with their wisdom and love.

I guess, part of it is what we receive during the silent and cold months of spiritual winter. Whether we rest in God and soak up the nutrients showered on us. Sometimes it is good for us to accept the sometimes smelling stuff that we seem to have land on us, for what may appear to be no good reason. There’s a time for letting other people dump on us, for their sakes, as long as it is only for a season. Listening to others can give us deeper compassion and make us reach deeper for answers in prayer.

But everyone needs a personal spring season. Everyone