The Garden: An Inspiration

Those of you who know me through my writing know that I love gardening.  This love of gardening comes partly from my historic/geographic gene pool – I’m a Brit and we’re almost all gardening mad!  The other part is still  from my gene pool but from a more intimate and personal section – the family.  Both my parents loved the garden, but my Dad had an absolute passion for his garden.

I’m not a very organized gardener as I’ve already mentioned in other postings.  I’m not a very organized anything because I’m a real “fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda gal”.  My garden is a veritable hodge-podge of flowers and plants and I’m never quite sure what’s going to pop up where.  I throw seeds all over the place and plant bulbs here and there, then I sit back and wait for the wonder of nature.

I love the growing process.  Taking a seed and watching it peep up through the soil with it’s first tip of green is a most exciting adventure for me.  It fascinates me that from that tiny little thing a whole flower or plant or bush or even a tree can come forth. 

Sometimes I stand in my back yard with a seed in my hand and I look at everything that’s growing around me, and I am in absolute awe as I think it all started with a few seeds.  The hand of God is most definitely present in such a miracle.

Gardening brings me great joy and I consider it to be wonderful therapy for the soul.  Gardening takes me out of myself and is one of the few activities through which I feel a real connection with God.  Gardening makes my heart happy.

But today I realized another benefit that comes from my hard work out there in the garden.  Of late my husband has started taking series of photos of my garden.  At first he was taking general all-around shots so that we could share them with the rest of the family that is flung around the world.

More recently he began taking close-ups of single blooms and flowers.  Such works of art each and every one in itself.  He also took one set that was all leaves and they turned out to be very interesting and beautiful.  But here’s the kicker.

Richard is also this “computer geekie/techie guy”.  He works a lot with Windows 7 and it allows him to create themes.  These are a series of images that you can put together as desktop wallpaper.  Well he has taken my garden as his inspiration for creating beautiful themes that are available for free download if you work with Windows 7.

If you’re a garden fanatic and you’d like to check out more shots of my garden, you can visit our Summer Garden shots album.  I hope you get as much enjoyment from this as I do.