For me this Sunday’s readings have a gardening theme running through them. We hear of God taking a cutting from a great cedar tree and planting it at the top of the mountain. It will, Ezekiel reminds us, become a noble cedar and every kind of bird will live in it – it will be a sign to all that Lord is the One that wills all life. In the Gospel Jesus reminds us that the tiniest seed can be the beginning of an enormous plant!
If the plants in your garden this year are anything like those in the garden of No 3 Windhill, then you will have, like me, had to think hard about the layout of your beds… The combination of the weather etc., has resulted in some usually medium sized plants becoming great thugs!
My silver leafed globe artichoke is already a good 5ft high with its flower buds beginning to rise up through the foliage;
The cephalaria, gargantua (that’s a giant cream coloured scabius and rather fine!) is for the first time truly “gargantua” well up to 5 ft. too.
Our Lady’s statue in one of the beds is being smothered by a couple of usually gentle, low plants…in fact much of the garden is going mad!
I did realise last year that my main Dahlia bed was going to need lifting and replanting, since I have left the Dahlias in for at least six years and they have grown very big, suffocating everything else in the summer. So, it was lifting and dividing time earlier this year. It has gone well and I took the opportunity to try and put everything back with the tallest at the back and the lowest at the front.. We’ll see soon how well I have managed it.
So, it is not just mustard “trees” that can grow; we too can do the same and possibly amaze ourselves at how much we can grow and also astound ourselves at what tasks we can take on, putting out branches strong enough to hold the weight of others that the Lord might send us to carry for a while. What a delight and what a challenge to occasionally have to reassess ourselves and accept the great spurts of growth that God sends us!