I am a planner.
You carefully sketch and design your gardens and borders. You plan for height and variety, texture and color. You create walkways and growing areas, a border here, a berm there.
Early spring finds you growing seedlings on the window sill. It takes such effort and exact science to make the small plants whole and healthy enough to finally be transplanted into the garden where they will grow to bring you joy and food for the season.
But for all the careful planning, for the pages of written plans saying eggplant will go in this square and a Japanese cucumber will go in that square and hmmm, let’s plant Nasturtiums here, there are the unexpected plants for which I did not account, the “volunteers.”
From out of nowhere.
There was a day I’d have pulled them all at first sighting, but now I don’t. Now I see a Zinnia or a Marigold that has decided to grow in a crevice or between bricks or have just plopped themselves right in the middle of a walkway, and I give them their space. Now I am glad they have upset my carefully laid plans and have just shown up, out of nowhere ~ a gift, a happy surprise.
The volunteers, sometimes flowers, sometimes a vegetable of some sort, while often getting a late start compared to the seedlings, ultimately catch up and are stronger and more established than the plants I’ve been coaxing, fawning over, encouraging to grow. They are just there. They just showed up, no work or toil. Just there for the enjoyment. They are divine blessings – an infusion of favor that I didn’t have to work hard to get, which makes them all the more delightful. And cherished.
pictured: some “volunteer” zinnias I keep getting to cut and enjoy inside; they just keep producing blooms and I did not do one thing to deserve it…
I King 4: 29 God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. 30 Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations. 32 He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. 33 He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. 34 Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.
“The plant life from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the walls…”
The hyssop was a small, paintbrush looking insignificant plant that was so common that no one noticed it…
But God did and thought it pertinent enough to allow the wisest man that ever lived to take note of it. “When other’s see a shepherd boy, God sees a king”.
Sometimes what we see as trivial is put there to remind us that God sees us even when we feel squeezed inbetween the cement stones of life and would be trampled except for someone recognizing our worth… I love all of your plants, honey and hate it when even one living thing in our backyard as to be pulled or cut down…