A weed is just a plant that is growing where it isn’t valued. Or growing in the super-healthy-I’m-so-glad-to-be-alive way that it infringes on another plant that is actually desired.

It’s gardening time!

I went to  prepare the rock garden for some squash and pumpkin seedlings. It’s a spacious area where they may curl and swoop and tendril freely while my grandbebes may happily traipse through on pretty stones they fashioned to watch the fruit grow.

You’ll note from previous garden posts in 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, etc… that I spend a great deal of my first gardening days each year attacking and battling hollyhocks, garlic chives and Russian Sage. The Cold War is not over in my yard!

So, that is where I started again this year…trying to remove what shouldn’t be there and is growing like a weed, so I can place other plants I do value and will almost certainly have to coax to grow.

The point of the tale

I went in with a vengeance, hacking away at those irrepressible hollyhocks, so deeply tap-rooted, so strong and very prolific. I was digging out the garlic chives who believe themselves to be welcome anywhere and everywhere and I was beating back the Russian Sage, reminding it of the boundaries I had insisted upon less than a year ago.

Then I spotted them, hundreds and I mean hundreds of short, sturdy seedlings, snapdragons, all, at my feet. Somehow, last year’s snapdragons had left their prodigy in the rock garden in literal droves all the way around each grandbebe-designed and crafted stepping stone.

A few feet away, I saw a huge patch of happy white chamomile, yellow-dotted daisies on bushy, strong plants totally filling one of my 4 foot by 4 foot square gardens, as if I were going to live off chamomile tea forever.

I cannot leave these plants. The chamomile isn’t useful to me in the spaces where I’ll get so many wonderful fresh vegetables for the summer. And the snapdragons, though one of my favorite annuals, can’t grow around the stepping stones or they’ll be no place for tiny feet to walk safely through to enjoy the irises and pumpkins and day lilies and moss roses and butternut squash and yes, even the Russian Sage and hollyhocks.

Snapdragons are wonderful, Chamomile is glorious. But when they are where they shouldn’t be, well, then Houston, we have a problem.

The Chamomile is fully flourishing, flowering with divine joy. The snapdragon, if given just a few weeks would provide an amazing and colorful show. I couldn’t just rip them out and throw them away.

“Just because you can’t grow here, little seedlings, doesn’t mean you can’t be a star somewhere else.” That is what I told my little plants.

You’ve heard the old saying “Bloom where you are planted?” But sometimes there is an uprooting, for whatever reason. Sometimes you may have put down roots and thought you were at your forever place. But you couldn’t stay.  Your value couldn’t be realized there. It’s just part of living.

Just because you couldn’t bloom where you were planted doesn’t mean you will never get to be everything He created you to be and do everything He has equipped you to do. It doesn’t mean you can’t be saved. Grace saves.

“Don’t worry,” I told the flowering plants, “you can’t stay here, but we’ll find you a spot.”

I felt like God re-affirmed that to me, even as I said it.

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace [Who imparts all blessing and favor], Who has called you to His [own] eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will Himself complete and make you what you ought to be, establish and ground you securely, and strengthen, and settle you.”  1 Peter 5.10 Amp.

Our God, the God of all gardens and life and living and roots and growth, our God, who makes all things new, is able to establish us, heal us, ground us securely and strengthen us and actually cause us to flourish!

“The [uncompromisingly] righteous shall flourish like the palm tree [be long-lived, stately, upright, useful, and fruitful]; they shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon [majestic, stable, durable, and incorruptible]. Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God. [Growing in grace] they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap [of spiritual vitality] and [rich in the] verdure [of trust, love, and contentment]. [They are living memorials] to show that the Lord is upright and faithful to His promises; He is my Rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”  Psalm 92.12- 15 Amp.

Just because you couldn’t stay in this garden here, don’t give up hope that you can be the upright, strong, fruitful star of that one over there. Bloom where you are transplanted!