Meditations in God’s Garden

Spring arrived slowly this year.  In Michigan, where I make my home, the earth is still brown and muddy and the trees are bare; and there’s still the chance that a rogue snowfall will smother the crocuses and the snowdrops, those delicate precursors of green grass and fragrant flowerbeds.

Still, though, Spring is the time when our hearts turn to the garden.  Not in the hot Summer, when sultry breezes make it all too easy to set down the trowel and just loll around near the air conditioner; and not in the Fall, when the brilliant reds and yellows suggest the certain death that follows the first frost.

So every Spring, seed companies mail out their catalogs, tempting customers with full-color photos promising earthly delights.

This year, though, I’m anticipating the first flush of Spring while reading Margaret Rose Realy’s latest book, A Catholic Gardener’s Spiritual Almanac.

Margaret is a master gardener.  It was my great privilege last summer to visit her home garden and to see the great care she’d given to her perennials, the bottle art with which she punctuated the beds, the path that called visitors to spend just a few more minutes.  Tucked in among the hostas and the coreopsis, the daisies and the daylilies, Margaret had plants which encouraged prayer, plants named for Mary, the Mother of God, plants from biblical times.

A Catholic Gardener’s Spiritual Almanac is a garden guide which takes the reader through the year–combining instructions for preparing the soil, then harvesting, then resting peacefully during the cold winter months.  And all that work in the garden?  Well, Margaret sees it as a metaphor for the spiritual life.  In March, we’re pruning; in April, preparing the soil; in June comes transformation and new life; and in July, we brace ourselves as the storms come….

Margaret offers practical gardening tips and techniques, and much more.  Tucked into the pages of this lovely book are scriptural meditations with a garden theme; traditions and feasts of each month; Bible stories; stories of saints whose feasts fall during the month (St. Wenefrid, patron of vegetable gardeners), especially saints with gardening-related stories (St. Ulric, patron against rodents!)  The reader will enjoy picking up the book for just a few minutes, to explore faith-filled garden activities or to plan a liturgical garden or a Lenten garden.

Margaret has brought together prayers and blessings, biblical reflections, directions for planting a Marian garden.  Here a poem, there a prayer….and always, an encouragement toward greater virtue.  I loved the table of flowers found on the Shroud of Turin, and the table of saints and associated plants.

A Catholic Gardener’s Spiritual Almanac would be a great book to give as a gift, or to keep near at hand for inspiration, tending to both the garden and the soul.  You can read an entire chapter, or just a few paragraphs.