Fiona Veitch Smith

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 7

Valentine’s Day has come and gone with shop-bought flowers filling my vases. Of course I know the tiger lilies, chrysanthemums, statys and roses were pampered in a hot house in Holland, but they do put my meagre home-grown dafs to shame. Never mind, it’s early days and by Mother’s Day I’m sure I’ll be able to pick me old mum a bunch from the garden.

Taming the Jungle

But while the spring flowers look promising, the lawn is another matter. I moved into this house five years ago and took ownership of a weed infested jungle. The first season was spent digging up the thistles, dandelions and daisies which inevitably left huge craters that needed to be filled. Meanwhile, I had single-handedly dug out the turf around three sides of my front lawn to create some flower beds. My front garden is a postage stamp three metres by three metres square and gives me far less trouble than its larger cousin at the back – mainly because of the lawn. I don’t know enough to tell you about the different kinds of grass, but I do know that the front lawn is made of better stuff.

Anyway, with nine metres of recently dug turf at my disposal, I decided to patch up the back lawn. As the patches still had fresh loose soil, I simply laid the new turf on top. Then I waited for the rain. And I waited. And I waited. In the meantime I watered the lawn once a day with my trusty watering can – I don’t have a garden tap, by the way (don’t ask), and I don’t want to have leaking hose pipes running across my carpets from the kitchen or bathroom.

When the rain doesn’t come

While we had a gloriously hot summer that year, my lawn repair never took. So by the next spring, I was back where I started – only worse. Moss had grown into the exposed patches and I spent the next season trying to remove that and re-seed. It took three more years to finally get the lawn into a decent condition, and I was looking forward to picnics and lawn games with my daughter. Then we got the hound from hell. She digs, she tears out clumps with her teeth and she uses my beautifully restored grass as her personal race track. So back to square one. Ho hum.

I took out the old lawn mower yesterday after first raking up the last of the leaves and half chewed sticks. I gave the lawn a short back and sides and examined the damage. Mmm, not as bad as I had thought. I’ve worked out my repair strategy, including one of those spiky roller things to aerate the soil, yet another bag of lawn seed and fertiliser and, most importantly, firmer disciplinary measures for the hound. I’ll let you know how it goes.

A new heaven and a new lawn

I wonder how God feels when he looks at His patchy creation. Is He ever tempted to dig it all up and start again? Mind you, He did take drastic measures with the Flood, but He refused to kill the good with the bad and saved Noah and his family. And of course, the Bible tells us that there will come a time when the earth will be made new. But the ‘good’ grass, that, as the Bible refers to it, has overcome, will be included in it. That’s the promise of the Gospel. We may live through difficult times now but we look forward to the day when there is a new heaven and a new earth and those who have believed in God and received His grace will be part of it. But for now I’d better get back to my lawn.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
Revelation 21:1, 3-4

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