Thoughts And A Few Prayers In The Garden — Letters From Foxglove Farm

I was out this afternoon working in the small kitchen flower border, which Agatha had said needed something cheery planted to welcome visitors. It’s a tiny spot with just room enough for a handful of plants, it’s the perfect spot for something showy and colorful to make people smile. I had been to the garden center earlier and picked out the most beautiful yellow daylily, a cheery coneflower, several old-fashioned pink Hollyhocks, and a baby Heavenly Blue morning glory and couldn’t wait to tuck them into their new home.

(thank you, sweet friends, for encouraging me to enjoy the garden more this summer, I’ve taken your good advice to heart in rather an alarmingly enthusiastic way! There’s another story waiting to be told, I arrived home with only room in the driver’s seat, my car literally looked like a rolling greenhouse, I’m not to be trusted when it comes to plants.)

After unloading the car, I worked for a bit arranging the hollyhocks, all shades of pink and soft white, the lemon daylily, an unusual cheery yellow coneflower. The morning glory vine was trying his best to clamber his way up everything in sight and simply begging to get in into the ground sooner rather than later. I worked along smoothly, popping plants out of their pots and into the rich dark soil.

It’s usually a simple matter of upending whatever plant I’m ready to place in its spot. Just give a firm thump on the bottom and out slides the root ball all ready to settle into its new home where it’s real growth could begin, free of the confines of the restrictive plastic pots. I reached for the lily and told her that she was going to be amazing next to the coneflower and those Hollyhocks. I turned her pot over and gave a thump and nothing happened. I thumped harder and shook the pretty flower, (who was probably thinking her small world was coming to an end) all to no avail. The lily was firmly stuck in her pot and obviously not thinking much of the idea of leaving what she thought was a perfectly acceptable home.

Finally, realizing the lily wasn’t going to budge without reinforcements, I went and got a most unlikely gardening assistant from the garage, a rather ancient but most efficient-looking hammer. The poor lily surely must’ve been shocked when I started whacking away on the bottom of the pot, but sure enough, those roots began to loosen and she slowly slid out of that constricting, binding, even smothering plastic pot and into my gloved hands, indeed, her roots were much in need of more room to stretch and grow.

Poor thing didn’t believe it at the time but better things were ahead for her. I quickly tucked her into the lovely cool soil where she could spread her roots and grow to beautiful maturity. I was right, she looked amazing next to the other flowers.

Stories rattle around in my head at the most unlikely times and while I struggled to convince the lily that it truly was the very best thing to leave her confining dwelling place and trust herself to the gardener’s hands, I was thinking of a dear young friend and her recent struggles to leave what surely must have felt like a safe haven. But like the lily, the time had come to leave that temporary home where she found herself. She’d just gone through a rather cataclysmic change which I’m sure must have felt like a hammering of sorts, shaking her loose from everything she knew and was comfortable with.

But I know that my prayers and the prayers of her sweet family and the others who love her and whose hearts ache for her, will be answered and that what she thought was a disappointing and sad change of direction was instead God’s working out His best for her life.

Be encouraged my dear young friend, God loves you and all will be well. You can trust the heavenly Gardener, though He sometimes seems to allow our small worlds to be turned upside down, there are wonderful opportunities ahead for you, just spread your roots deep and begin to grow…

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Letters From Foxglove Farm