Quote:  Look within.  Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.  ~~Marcus Aurelius

Living in Phoenix where summer temperatures once reached 122 degrees on June 26, 1990, I am a gardener who loves anything that grows.  Absolutely anything.

When people from Phoenix move to Oregon, we don’t cut down trees either.  Just ask my grade school friend Shawnee.  It took her fifteen years to grab a chainsaw.

This Arizona fried-brain attitude makes life very difficult in the garden.  Seed packages tell you to place zinnias six inches apart.  But when you look at a small seedling isolated on a patch of dry dirt, six inches is a long way to reach a fellow zinnia.  This is also why it’s very hard for an Arizonan to work up a hatred for weeds.

I remember the first Californian who walked through my lush green yard.  “What is this?” she asked.  When I told her, she exclaimed in horror, “In California, Bermuda grass is a weed!!”

“Well,” I inwardly sniffed, “it’s green.  Besides, everybody grows Bermuda grass.  And double besides, I can buy Bermuda grass seed at the nursery.”  I didn’t want her to know she hurt my feelings, but to call Bermuda grass a weed seemed a bit harsh.

Slowly, one question percolated up from inside of me, finally rising to the surface.  What is a weed?  I began looking up weeds in every gardening book I could find.  Most didn’t tell you what they were.  They only told you how to poison them.

Eventually, in my non-poison Rodale organic gardening “bible,” I found what I had by now begun to suspect, “Weeds are simply native plants that happen to be growing where you would rather have something else grow.”  Webster’s is even more to the point, “A plant that is not valued where it is growing.”  Further down, Webster leaves no doubt, “an obnoxious growth, thing, or person.”

I’ve learned to identify with weeds.  Bermuda grass knows how to take advantage of limited water and soil conditions.  It’s willing to endure searing summer heat to give us green grass by the swimming pool.  That’s enough to make me forgive it when it sneaks into the row of cucumbers.  I still dig and pull at stray Bermuda strands, insisting they obey my boundaries.  But I don’t poison it.  And I don’t celebrate over its dry remains.  I wish it well.

Weeds take me closer to God than almost any plant I know.  In human terms they may be plants “not valued where they are growing,” but I doubt God thinks that.  He made weeds.  He made me.

Many days I feel like a human weed.  There are people who have told me as much.  But God made me.  He doesn’t make weeds.  He makes plants who extend beyond their boundaries, and he makes people who goof up now and then.  But God doesn’t make weeds.  He loves us.   And He wants us.  No matter what names people want to stick on us.  There are no weeds in God’s kingdom.

Scripture:   For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  Psa 139:13-14

Reflection:  Each day, write one special accomplishment of that day on a 3 x 5 note card.  At the end of seven days, choose a nickname for yourself based on your accomplishments.  Post your nickname on the refrigerator…and smile.

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More God’s Abundance, stories of inspiration, Kathy Collard Miller, ed., Starburst Publishers, 1999, contributor, “Weeds.”

Quote: God who gives the wound gives the salve.
~~Miguel de Cervantes

Today I bought a small pot of basil.  Unfortunately, it was the only pot on the shelf and a terrible specimen.  Years ago I might have been fooled into thinking it beautiful, but an unexpected garden lesson taught me the truth.

Twenty years ago I grabbed my first packet of basil seed in an urgent wild determination to have an herb garden.  Never mind that my cooking was the bare-bones, onion-is-good-in-everything, style.  Never mind that I didn’t recognize the names of half the packages in my hand, including basil.  I would learn.

My first wonder at planting those packets of seeds was in how very teeny, tiny and almost non-existent they were.  They showed up like heavy dust at the bottom of the packet.  My garden book taught me a trick that helped to spread them out over several square feet:  mix them into a tablespoon of sand and toss!

Once planted, I made their potential lives impossible, if not miraculous.  I raked them into the soil too vigorously and showered them generously with mulch.  Buried under too much soil, they had no hope of growing tall enough to reach sunshine.  The birds didn’t mind.  I don’t know how, but bird eyes and noses can find a miniscule basil seed under half an inch of soil.

Imagine my shouts of joy two weeks later, as here and there, I found lucky herb plant sprouts around the garden.  One stubborn basil sprout grew tall and proud at the corner post closest to the path.  I loved to check its progress upward every morning.  What joy I felt as it reached eight inches tall!

And what despair I knew the next day when I discovered it broken off just above the bottom leaves!  It was more than I could bear.  I quit looking to the corner of the garden in the mornings.

Weeks later, on a leisurely day where I could poke and prod under and around plants checking for ripe squash and tomatoes I came upon a lovely small bush in the corner where my broken basil had been.  It bushed out in three large branches close to the ground in brilliant emerald green, and it smelled delicious.  It smelled Italian!  Basil!!

I broke off the ends of the stems and ran into the house to find a recipe for my first herb harvest.  Over the weeks, as my cooking improved, we continued to break off the ends of the basil limbs for new recipes.  Undeterred, the basil bush grew and grew.  Visitors to our garden commented, “I’ve never seen such a beautiful basil bush!”

Succeeding gardens taught me the secret of my basil plant.  It must be pruned early and continuously.  At every juncture where a sprig of basil is harvested, two or more new branches will grow.

I’ve also learned this is God’s secret with me.  While I would like to have my life grow untamed and free from pain, God knows the power of pruning.  Carefully, he pinches off a life option here, but he opens two doors for me there.  Firmly, he breaks off my prideful branches and waits for humility to grow in their place.  And the more I turn to His Word, the more he teaches me about the pruning I need and come to expect.

The basil plant I bought yesterday is tall and stringy, eight inches tall in one strong stem.  But I know how to fix it.  I know it has the makings of a beautiful bush.

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Scripture:  My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.  Pro 3:11-12

Reflection:  Think back to a major disappointment of your childhood and think of two blessings from it that have enriched your life.  Tell these to a close friend.