A Sucker or a Rose?

April 27, 2016April 28, 20201 Comment

If you are a person familiar with the Bible, you probably are familiar with the concept of God being like a shepherd. Ezekiel 34 speaks to God judging between sheep, rams, and goats to see who is truly of His flock and who isn’t.

{photo credit: Hanford Rose}

Similarly, us gardeners need to discern between actual rose canes and something called “suckers”. Many rose bushes you buy at local home improvement stores and nurseries are grafted onto a hardy, vigorous root stock. If you see a knot at the base of a rose, this is called a “bud union” where the two plants are united. Once planted, below the ground is the hardy root stock. Above the ground is the bush you selected for it’s color, fragrance, disease resistance, etc. Sometimes, what’s known as a “sucker” grows up out of the ground alongside the rose bush you purchased. The sucker is a separate cane that has manifested from the root stock. The sucker often looks similar at first to the rose bush you bought – after all, it is still a rose cane. Eventually, as both the sucker and the intended rose bush develop, the gardener will realize the sucker is indeed a very different bloom than the one they bought. If one is new to rose gardening though, it would be easy to assume the sucker is in fact a normal part of the rose bush until both mature. It is then, one will clearly be able to differentiate the two just like the reapers could in the parable of the wheat and tares. Once the gardener determines the difference, the sucker must be removed.

How about you? Are you a glorious rose in God’s garden or are you a look-alike sucker that will eventually be removed?

Ever-Learning

April 19, 2016April 26, 2016Leave a comment

{photo credit: Kathy Keatley Garvey}

Now that it appears Spring has fully sprung, I discovered an influx of aphids enjoying my aspiring rose buds. Aphids are tiny insects that smother the tips of rose canes, foliage, and buds while sucking the life out of any given plant. Left unchecked they can damage a rose bush and therefore, prevent a hopeful bud from blooming. Aphids often camouflage with the greenery of many plants, although they can come in a variety of colors. Perplexed as to why an abnormal amount of aphids were clinging to my canes this Spring, I reached out to my local rose society for answers. Despite my roses’ healthy foliage, nutritious soil, and lack of disease, most likely the mild winter didn’t suppress the previous year’s aphid population and their eggs allowing for more to flourish this year. Thankfully, with rose gardening comes an informative community of rosarians ready to help one succeed in growing beautiful roses whether through your local rose society or online. Facebook groups offer a fun way to see blooms from all around the world while getting answers fast! Regardless if one is educated through the web, books, experience or all of the above, gardening, particularly rose gardening, requires an attitude of ever-learning!

Similarly, I have found as a rose in God’s garden, we too need an ever-learning attitude for there is always more to learn about God, His Word, and His principles. After all, it shouldn’t surprise us that there is an infinite amount to learn about an infinite God. If you aren’t growing in God, then you probably are shriveling just as the aphids do to the foliage of a rose. Perhaps now is the time to reach out to your local body of Christ, being the church, to get the answers, accountability, and the encouragement you need to thrive just as I needed to reach out to my local rose society for help.

To learn more about treating aphids and other insects commonly found in the garden, get a copy of my book Ever-Blooming During the Good, the Bad, and the Bugly.

Trust The Process

April 14, 2016April 28, 2020Leave a comment

Sweet Peas grow up to around 6 feet tall with a variety of colors! {photo credit: unknown}

If you ever want to experience joy while refining your level of patience, then nurturing tiny seeds into seedlings and eventual full grown veggies or other blooms is a process to trust. For the past several weeks, I’ve watched Sweet Peas evolve from tiny round seeds to long slender stems with several small leaves. Around the time they were ready to be transitioned to the great outdoors, our area experienced an ongoing winter-like cold snap that lasted for a couple of weeks preventing me from transplanting them where they could reach their full potential. Meanwhile, my Sweet Peas were getting so tall they were flopping over and their roots were attempting to break forth from the seedling cell pack I originally started them in.

As I impatiently waited on the Lord to intervene in our wacky weather, He softly spoke to me about how the conditions weren’t right for the seedlings to flourish or put another way, the seedlings weren’t ready for the demands of the external conditions. Much like we, as baby believers, may grow suddenly and are eager to get out there to lead or teach, but often we simply aren’t ready for the conditions we will have to endure. Just as there is a “hardening off” process where I have to slowly introduce the seedlings to the ideal external conditions by placing them outdoors for a few minutes a day for several days until they are ready to be permanently exposed to the outdoor environment, people of faith need to be raised up and gently prepared prior to blessing their surrounding environment with fragrant blooms or refreshing fruit. Otherwise, the chilly nights, scorching sun, or unexpected storms will quickly snuff out our enthusiastic seedling forever ruining the patient process of producing anything substantial or eternal.

Sweet Peas bouquets {photo credit: Floret Flowers}

With everything, there is a process – a process we must learn to trust. If you are willing to display the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit, if you are willing to dispense the sweet aromas of God, if you are willing to be overcoming and ever-blooming for Him, then you have to first be willing to go through the process of growing up in God until the conditions in your heart and surrounding circumstances are ready and able to bear fruit. Be encouraged and diligent though as your roots deepen and stems thicken for a time will come when He will transplant you providing you with ample opportunity to manifest His glorious blooms securely planted in Him!

For step by step directions on how to grow Sweet Peas from seed, check out this helpful article by Floret Flowers.

Fighting With The Wind

April 1, 2016March 23, 2019Leave a comment

Yesterday, the strong winds violently shook my solid holly tree, whipped my small garden flag, and swirled my hair all around me as I took out the garbage. Today, a gentle breeze soothes my roses from the warmth of the Spring Sun. And as the bees buzz around searching for new buds and the butterfly flutters, they fight with the wind. Meanwhile, the roses sway in the motion of the wind as if relaxed by it’s movement.

Peace with Fourth of July in background

I wonder why it is we all too often fight with the wind for the wind signifies the Spirit of God. Jesus informs us God is Spirit and where it comes from and where it goes we cannot easily determine. We can only do so by listening to the sound of it (see John 3:3-8). Christ teaches much depth in such analogies, but one could decode the importance of listening for the Voice of His Spirit or His Wind in order to follow Him wherever He blows. Furthermore, we cannot see His Holy Spirit as the Jews could see His flesh, but we can see the effects of Him blowing around us, in us, and through us. Do you fight the sound of His wind as a struggling insect or do you welcome it like a relaxed rose? What does His Wind sound like to you? What does He look like in your garden? Life is too short to fight with the wind.

Ground-Covering or Ground-Breaking: Which Are You?

March 27, 2016Leave a comment

Peach Drift is about 1.5 feet high by 2 to 3 feet wide. Although, some of my drift roses’ canes reach nearly three feet high.

As the warm Spring air awakened my senses, I decided to spend sometime addressing the garden beds my ground-covering drift roses call home. Kneeling on my padded garden mat, I ever so delicately cleared away the dead leaves that found themselves entangled within the canes of these low to the ground roses. While slowly and carefully clearing away the fallen leaves, random trash, and overgrown weeds from tight places so close in between the rose canes and the dirt, the Holy Spirit gently pointed out to me how these little wandering roses were being smothered and held down partly by the dead leaves embedded in their canes, partly by the proximity of the rose being too low to the ground, and partly by the weeds that encamped these drift roses. Similarly, how easy it is to become small roses “drifting” through life by hanging onto burdensome leaves like offense or by allowing enormous life sucking weeds like negative people, places, or things to stunt our growth. Thankfully, when Jesus, as our Master Gardner, kneels down besides us, reaches in our mess, and starts to slowly clear the debris, we can start to see the truth of our ugly realities, who He is, and who we are in His beautiful garden more clearly. When we start to accept the truth of our own captivity and how we got there, while letting God’s Spirit get in our dirt, we will no longer be ground-covering roses painfully drifting through this garden called life. Instead, we will be ever-blooming and ever-growing roses breaking new ground!

The Darkness

March 23, 2016December 25, 2022Leave a comment

My new rose, “Angel Face” in bare root form.

While I patiently waited for a Spring cold snap to pass, I stored my impulsively bought bare root rose in my basement to keep her from becoming dehydrated in my toasty home until conditions are favorable for planting. As I took a load of laundry down into the chilly dark basement, I was surprised to see my new rose addition had quickly developed swollen leaf buds despite the dark and damp conditions. It was then while tossing in the laundry detergent, I pondered the often-overlooked truth that our personal darkness – you know the struggles, the hardships, and the issues of life can still be opportunities to grow. Within the garden of my life, my biggest revelations and more importantly, transformations have happened in my soul when I’ve been forced into the darkness. We usually don’t realize or want to realize God sometimes calls us INTO the darkness for our own benefit as I did for my infant rose. In fact, Isaiah 45 invites us to seek out treasures within the darkness and tells us God created both the light AND the darkness! So, the next time you find yourself in dark and damp conditions, know that God has you there for a reason. It may be to protect you until conditions are more favorable. You could be like my little rose by considering the darkness an opportunity for growth!

Pruning the Garden of Your Heart

March 10, 2016December 25, 2022Leave a comment

The weather is warm, the leaf buds are swollen with potential, and life is good. With only ten days till it’s officially Spring, my heart swells with garden joy! Little by little, I’ve been preparing my garden for healthy abundant blooms. While raking fallen leaves and cutting out dead wood, my spirit rises knowing glorious beauty will manifest.

Similarly, separating the fallen and dead is what must occur in order for God’s kingdom to bloom in our hearts and on Earth one fine day.

There has to be a pruning of our hearts, a raking of our fallen leaves, and cutting off the dead wood taking up real estate within our hearts and minds. If you believe in the prophetic writings found throughout Tanakh, anything that is not of God’s righteousness ultimately will be pruned and burnt up. How much more glorious if we allow God to shape us into the ever-blooming rose bush He dreamed of when we were nothing but seedlings!

The Master Gardener will prune our heart’s garden if we let Him — if we cooperate with His will being done in our hearts and homes rather than growing into a mess of an overgrown, out-of-control shrub! Although His pruning painfully cuts deep at times within our souls, His intentions are to manifest the beautiful design He dreamed for us when He planted us in His well-landscaped garden.

Knock Out’s Sweet Drift

This Spring, as you plan out, prepare, and prune a garden of your own, ask yourself: What is God, your Master Gardener, pruning in you? What needs to be cut out of your heart in order for you to manifest abundant blooms in His garden? God wants to see you bloom. He wants you to live in His ever-blooming love both now and forever with Him in His eternal garden. In order to be ever-blooming though, you need to allow Him to prune the garden of your heart.

“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” Deuteronomy 30:6