In the Garden

We've started mowing off the garden. It's hard to believe the weedy, rotting mess we're working on now was this well-groomed patch of hopes and dreams back in July. I took photos because this was the best-tended, best-weeded garden I'd ever been a party to.

I've been thinking about how words mean different things to different people. This fenced-in vegetable patch comes to mind of when I hear the word "garden." In England, the thing people call the "garden" is all the cultivated ground surrounding a house. I was continually confusing people there by praising their beautiful backyards. (I wonder what that conjured up for them.)

As a child, I was fascinated by the hymn "In the Garden." I assume, now, that the author pictured, and meant us all to picture, an English-style garden. I called the thing pictured above a garden. I knew the roses mentioned in the hymn must have been in a nearby flower bed.

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear,
Falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am his own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

I imagined Jesus getting soft garden dirt in his sandals as he carefully stepped over the row of beans, the row of tomatoes, into the cucumber patch....Everybody likes a nice garden, and the Lord would surely not step on good produce.