Sabbath Rest: the Scent of a Rose

A Persian fable says: One day
A wanderer found a lump of clay
So savory of sweet perfume
Its odor scented all the room.

"What are you?" was his quick demand,
"Are you some gem from Samarkand,
Or pure nard in this plain disguise,
Or other costly merchandise?"

"No, I am but a lump of clay."


"Then whence this wondrous perfume--say!"

"Friend, if the secret I disclose,
I have been dwelling with the rose."
Sweet parable! and will not those
Who love to swell with Sharon's rose,
Distill sweet odors all around,
Though low and poor themselves are found?

Dear Lord, abide with us that we

May draw our perfume fresh from Thee.

--L.B. Cowman

Late Summer's Economy in the Garden

What's wrong with this pictures? Or rather, with the flowers on display?



A lack of pruning, that's what. This time of year, soil nutrients are often lagging, and heat saps strength in the plants, making transpiration (sweating leaves) fierce and more a hardship than a help to the plant. The plant must work much harder to get its leaves to create the sugars that keep the fruit sweet and the plant itself healthy when the soil is hard, the nutrients less rich and the waters less available.






One answer is to help the plant by minimizing its requirements. Something like a plant's version of liposuction, although not exactly. A flowering plant with dead blossoms dangling from its stems is sucking nutrients up those stems unnecessarily, which means another stem is sacrificing--maybe a stem that leads to a beautiful healthy blossom. Most flowers will benefit from "dead-heading" those blooms that are finished with their season. And when the spray of blooms is as prolific as these, the loss of a few dead blossoms hardly gives the plant a barren look. What's more, it enhances the uniform beauty of the blooms that remain.


But flowers aren't the only plants that can benefit from pruning. Recently, I had a friend give me a few pointers on pruning tomatoes. I promptly came home and took my pruning shears to my own tomato plants and zucchini.


A zucchini plant benefits in several ways from having a few of its leaves pruned. For one thing, air can circulate better through the part of the plant that is flowering and fruiting, making mold and mildew less of a problem.

For another, soil borne diseases are less likely to affect a plant that does not have its leaves literally lying across the ground. Some pests are less likely to find a home on leaves that are off the ground.







But the greatest benefit I'm seeing is in the tomato pruning my friend taught me. As I stood beside her in her own garden while she pruned her plants, I sighed and commented. "I'm so bad at this. I hate to cut away anything that isn't dead." Indeed, she was cutting ruthlessly at vibrant green leafing branches on her plant.

She smiled at me. "Well, it's true. In a way it is a life-lesson." She pointed one gloved hand at the branch she held and was about to snip. "See this branch?" she asked. "It's a non-producer. Notice how no blossoms are trying to form where it joins the main stalk? That's how you know it's a non-producer." Indeed, if a branch has no hope of producing a tomato, then its only benefit to the plant is that of photosynthesis. And many tomato plants, by late summer, spend more energy storing energy than they do ripening fruit. "You know it's time to do this when the plant stops making tomatoes, and when the tomatoes it already holds fail to ripen. If you prune back all but a necessary few leaves, mostly on top, you'll find the hanging fruit ripens nicely, and you might even start to see some new blooms."

She was absolutely right. Cutting away non-producers when producers begin to suffer the effects of age and weather, and weeding faithfully so the soil's nutrients aren't stolen by the things you never planted in the first place--these are your best hopes for maintaining productivity during the dog days of summer.

Sabbath Rest...the Fragrance of a Life Bittersweet

See the new and deeply fragrant blossoms in my wildflower garden? Many days they've been rising to statuesque heights, as flowers go--but no blossoms appeared.

"Are you sure those aren't weeds?" my husband asked dubiously.

"Let's wait and see," I answered.

These flowers came from an indefinite seed mix--we had no idea what would be growing.

I'm glad we didn't presume the worst, for their fragrance is delightful.

They put me in mind of a devotional--once again from the little book, Streams in the Desert--that I'll leave you with today.

"We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22)

The best things in life are the result of being wounded. Wheat must be crushed before becoming bread, and incense must be burned by fire before its fragrance is set free. The earth must be broken with a sharp plow before being ready to receive the seed...the sweetest joys of life are the fruits of sorrow. Human nature seems to need suffering to make it fit to be a blessing to the world.

Beside my cottage door it grows,

The loveliest, daintiest flower that blows,

A sweetbrier rose.

At dewy morn or twilight's close,

The rarest perfume from it flows,

This strange wild rose.

But when the raindrops on it beat,

Ah, then, its odors grow more sweet.

About my feet.

Often with loving tenderness,

Its soft green leaves I gently press,

In sweet caress.

A still more wondrous fragrance flows,

The more my fingers close

And crush the rose.

Dear Lord, oh, let my life be so

Its perfume when strong winds blow,

The sweeter flow.

And should it be Your blessed will,

With crushing grief my soul to fill.

Press harder still.

And while its dying fragrance flows

I'll whisper low, "He loves and knows

His crushed brier rose."

"If you want to be a person of consolation, if you want to share the priestly gift of sympathy, if you desire to go beyond giving commonplace comfort to a heart that is tempted, and if you long to go through the daily exchange of life with the kind of tact that never inflicts pain, then you must be prepared to pay the price for a costly education--for like Christ, you must suffer."

Frederick William Robertson.

Do I Really Have Time for All This?

One of the main questions that stops people short of venturing into the world of gardening and canning is this one: just how much time is this going to take? It is a valid question; and one that every person might answer differently, depending on how much care they want to put into the garden, what degree of productivity they expect from it, and how anal they are about its beauty-factor.

I can't really answer the question for you, but what I can do is give you a "schedule of events" during the 60 to 90 minutes I might spend on any given day with my garden.

7:15 Sipping my coffee and gazing out at the just-breaking dawn, I plan my morning's work related to gardening and canning.

7:21 Put the canner on to boil. Add jars to the already-loaded dishwasher and start a sanitizing cycle.



7:50 Canner starts to hiss. Put the vinegar-spice mix on to boil.

7:52 Drain the cut veggies that I put in a salt water soak last night. Rinse and drain again. Vinegar comes to a simmer.

8:03 Start the hose to water the garden. Leave it to soak one section.

8:10 Pour a second cup of coffee and walk the garden, looking for new produce to pick.

8:14 Add the veggies to the vinegar mixture.

8:15 Move the hose to water a new patch of the garden.

8:17 Suddenly remember to prep the canning lids. Race back inside to put water in the microwave to boil. Pull hot jars from the dishwasher.

8:22 Ladle mixed pickles into jars.

8:26 Clear air bubbles, wipe rims and apply caps and rings.

8:30 Jars go into the canner to process 10 minutes. Meanwhile, go outside and water potted herbs with a watering can after moving the hose to its last watering spot.



8:44 Jars are out of the canner and the hose is turned off. Slice and freeze the last of the green peppers that didn't make it into the pickle mix.

The sun has risen above the neighbor's house--but not too much higher since I started my work. It's 100% consuming for the time you dedicate to it, but it doesn't have to take you all day to have a fruitful gardening and canning life.

And it's a great way to connect with another aspect of old traditions--the idea of the weekly rhythm. While you may not have baking day or washing day or such, you will have weeding day and canning day, pruning day and fertilizing day. Walking through the rotation gives a mysterious flow to life in the garden that--for me anyway--translates well to help me avoid getting too myopic, too obsessive with one aspect of life, forgetting other important elements.

Sign off today: Happy balance!