Lilies of field in Palestine and Isreal
are poppies which bloom for
one day which “carpet the plains
and hills of Palestine.”

Summer is finally here. The weather has been in the 80’s all week and last week for the first time, in almost two years, we had a day over 90. Dinner tonight consisted of a salad with lettuce from the garden and baked kale from the garden. We have got our first tomatoes today and have basil, beans and chives ready to be processed, cooked, frozen or dehydrated. 8–10 flowers are in full bloom with more to come. All is well when your garden prospers.

Gardening is also therapy. Working with dirt from the earth is healing, physically and mentally. All the worries of world, high homicide rate in Milwaukee, greed taking money from the poor, ‘endless wars’ are all pushed to the back of mind as the body takes over working the garden.

I wish human beings could be as simple as the flowers and vegetables in the garden. They are focused on getting sun and water to grow. We humans can become so complicated that we need medicine to sleep and coffee to wake up. We attached to our things, like our digital devices and have a hard time letting go of things that we have no power over. We easily get used by the ‘powers to be’ fighting every little thing or living life in a deep sleep.

A seed gets buried in the ground, dies, and rises again as a plant. With sun and rain the plant grows. Weeds also grow and unless we keep them under control they can choke out the plants.

Too simple you say, our life being like the life of a garden. But it is worth it. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matt. 6:28–29).

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