Some gardeners have a knack for arranging flowers in a garden as easily as if they were in a vase. I am quite a novice at choosing nice color vignettes and combinations. Thankfully, flower beds are very forgiving, and plants grown together tend to get along, anyway.
Currently I am putting together a bed of colors that I normally would avoid. I had specimens that could not be ignored — tiger lilies, orange cannas, kniphofia; even the scorned “ditch lily.” They look fabulous together!
Little by little I am moving the hues that go together into their own groups. Reds and purples have been collecting in the front corner bed.
Now it is time to start arranging the collections into better combinations, with height and color balance taken into consideration. I’ve become aware that I have a few very vivid iris that would look stunning together.
The magenta-hued “Hot Spiced Wine” iris is almost the same color tones as “Xanthippe’s Halo,” and they would look really nice near the new “Fiery Temper.” Add a little “Superstition” black iris, and some red “Indian Chief,” maybe a “Devil’s Eye” daylily, and I think we have a color palette that will really pop. The names might be a little scary together, though! Maybe I could put the feathery Tansy in among the straight-leaved iris to calm things down.
This reminds me of the way a jigsaw puzzle is done. I might collect similar pieces into one general area, and then start putting them together.
The big difference is that my garden rewards me long before it is completed. In fact, experienced gardeners say that a garden is never really finished.
Too often I have looked at a task or even on whole sections of my life as if it were an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Now that I see a work in progress in the form of a garden, I understand better. I wanted to get it done, and done right. In real life, though, there are so many opportunities to change and even to turn mistakes into something good.
We may wonder how to fit together good parenting, work, gardening, cooking, community work, Bible class teaching, and other things into one short week. It can seem like scattered puzzle pieces, with some missing!
Puzzle pieces may not fit more than one way. In a garden, however, as in life, there are myriad good choices that can be made.
There are really only a few choices that are non-negotiable, that must be made right or the rest of the puzzle will be wrong. Choosing correctly on these will ensure that all other choices will line up.
This is not to say that we won’t fall into sin, or miss the mark. But if our priorities are right from the start, even the recovery from these poor choices will be made so much easier.
Joshua called Israel to an important choice — to follow the true God or impostor gods. Then he set the example and loudly declared it.
“Choose this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).
These refugees from slavery then proceeded to put together a nation of twelve tribes, their borders fitting together correctly like a puzzle. They had judges, then kings; they chose wrong and then were captured and exiled. They came back and rebuilt. God preserved Israel well enough to raise up a Savior for all of us. The puzzle was complete!
Now we must fit together the pieces we have in our own hands.
–by Christine Berglund