God’s Sticky Fingers

Summer. A season of beautiful lawns, luscious productive gardens, colorful blooming flowers, and sitting on the back deck in the cooling evening breeze. With these long awaited benefits comes … responsibility. I know, ick. (Stop reading NOW, and you won’t be held accountable ~ kidding)

Most benefits require responsibility. The garden needs watering, and weeding. We k2092918 water the flowers, know the plant well, giving it correct placement in the yard, shade, or full/partial sun. Then, for a healthy continuing blooming process comes, ‘dead heading.’ No, this does not mean slapping your neighbor along side the head, no matter how obnoxious they are!

The Gardener’s Network, defines dead heading as “Snipping, pruning, pinching, cutting or using any other means to remove spent blooms.” There are great benefits of this process, or might I say, menial task. It promotes new flower growth, extends the reproductive life cycle of the plant, and prevents the plant from wasting valuable energy on a stem that will no longer blooms, energy is then spent on the health of the plant and new blooms (or fruit). Ever ‘feel’ any of these action words done on YOU … snipping, pruning, pinching and cutting?

82035128 My mom and Gardener, Aunt Mona (everyone should have an Aunt Mona) taught me how to dead head. Mona owned and puttered around in a plant nursery. She could NOT walk through one of her green houses without touching the plants, and they were beautiful!

There are two plants I dislike dealing with, those are marigolds (they stink). When pinching the marigold the seeds found in the old blooms often go scattering about, before you know it, you have baby marigolds dancing around your feet. The other is the petunia they are STICKY! It has a defense system of a sap that flows from the stem to the petals. You may want to wear gloves for this little gem, your fingers will get sticky. Yet, stinky and sticky, both these plants have the potential to be FULL of bright colored blooms and can last the whole summer.

Jesus shares in John 15, He is the vine, the Father is the Gardener. “He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even MORE fruitful” (verse 2, emphasis mine) God the Father, the Gardener of our lives.

He is not bothered by the stinky or sappy sticky defense systems we have set up, or the 174-7-082 crunchy ugly spots here or there. He enjoys the hands on, must touch approach! The Gardener desires to have us fruitful, luscious, beautiful and healthy. To be and do so, takes snipping, pruning, pinching, cutting or any other means to remove the spent blooms. Who knows, that snip here, cut there, although painful at times, may cause a scattering of seeds, that in turn causes a new birth in and around you.