All England is a garden...

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. ~George Bernard Shaw

This morning I got up to find the cloud clinging to the hill tops & the smell of rain on the air. It is still & grey. Even the birds are silent.


I notice that my lemon & white Yesterday ~ today ~ & ~ tomorrow has suddenly burst into a profusion of flower. It doesn't bloom constantly like it's gaudier mauve & white cousin but I prefer its more delicate colouring. The mock orange is budding, the scent permeating every corner of the garden.


There are things I need to do. The basil has finally died. I need to rip it out & deep till the ground. I need to pick beans & tomatoes. These homely tasks are tasks that have been performed down through the centuries. Every generation of man has gone out into the dawn to pick the bounty while the dew is still fresh on it & the air is clean & crisp.


I'm not a knowledgeable gardener. I plonk things in our red soil & rejoice if they grow, sigh with exasperation if they die & go out & buy something else to fill the gap. I water if I am home & remember. Things have to be hardy to survive. Just the same I have a large rambling garden full of interesting plants whose names I've long since forgotten.


God is a gardener. The first thing he made on earth was a garden. He sort of spoilt the effect by adding people & a snake but the idea was good. Do you know how many different plants are mentioned by name in the bible? No I don't either & of those mentioned most I wouldn't know if I fell over them. Cedars of Lebanon? Rose of Sharon? Most likely this plant but you know, translations...Hyssop? Pomegranates? And olive trees! I'll never forget my first sight of a mature olive grove in France. I had never imagined how pretty olive trees are! The silver & green of their leaves in the breeze is so delicate & fragile.


I'm incedibly ignorant about anything I can't get to grow here & lets face it; Australia has a particularly unusual variety of flora. So I was intrigued to run into Neot Kedumim. Neot is the Biblical Landscape Reserve ~ a living landscape that seeks to preserve & display & name many of the plants & flowers mentioned in the bible. Neot from pastures, kudumim meaning ancient. It spreads over 625 acre of Israel's Modi'in region in Israel's lowlands. It was so desolate the builders of Neot couldn't be accused of destroying or interfering with nature because there was literally nothing to destroy or interfere with!. It was so barren & stony they had to bring in all the soil by the truckload. The water was jerry canned in on the backs of donkeys.

You'd never know it now. Neot has received international recognition for ecological restoration. What a mouthful! Now if someone would just do something about our interior...