Thursday, May 2, 2013

The Pascha Garden

My friends, I am overwhelmed by the emails I have gotten since my last post. So many words of encouragement and offers of prayer! It's certainly been a difficult week. My boy finally started processing Kearney's death on Tuesday night, so there have been many tears and much talking and praying. Necessity dictated lots of extra snuggles as well, which I will never turn down.

My arm is healing, but it feels so slow. I know it's only been a week, and it can take up to sixteen weeks for this tendon to heal, but I feel so useless sometimes. I shouldn't, I suppose, but it's part of the process. My leg is infected, and my arm needed subcutaneous stitches at Monday's appointment. At today's appointment, it was no better, and I needed still more antibiotics. I go back again on Monday. Hopefully after THAT appointment, I will be cleared to take the shower I want so desperately. No amount of sponge-bathing leaves you feeling as clean as even a five-minute shower! Please continue to keep me in your prayers. I heal slowly to start with, and this is pretty major, I suppose.

We were able to go to church last night for Holy Unction. I love Holy Week so much! I am a bit sad that I am not able to be there much this year, but I live an hour from any Orthodox church (and, in fact, I live almost exactly an hour from no less than seven Orthodox churches!), and making the drive with my arm is not very wise if it can be avoided. So this year, we are doing something extra-special at home. In fact, I think this may be the start of a family tradition.

My poor young botanist's flower bed has not been doing well. We have ONE sunflower and a few blue flax sprouting, but nothing else. I knew that was highly likely, since we didn't have time to really prepare the ground, and we didn't have a lot of soil to put down. But he was sad. He's sad about his dog, and he's sad about his injured mama, and he's sad about his flowers. I can't fix the first two, but I could do something about the third.

So, today, we went window shopping at the garden center, just to get an idea of what we might want to plant eventually. We ran into our neighbor and my son's best friend there, and they offered to let him come over and play for a while. PERFECT OPPORTUNITY! I had been needing to find a time for someone else to watch my boy so I could sneak out and buy him presents for his basket! (just a note: He got a huge basket with candy, toys, and books at my parents' Easter picnic a month ago, so I was planning on a small toy or two, maybe a Cadbury egg, and something we could do together. Lately, that means gardening, building, or painting.)

I went through the garden center on my own, lingering at the sale tables, and I hatched a plan. Then I went to find soil. I came back with a gusto, grabbing flats and quarts like a woman on a mission.

Did you know? There is NO good way to hide a bunch of flowers in a tiny little house for three nights without killing them.

So "Peter the Pascha Rabbit" came early to visit my son. He asked him to plant a Pascha garden, and to pray as he plants.


He has Joseph's Coat for the prophets, marigold for the Theotokos, white gardenias for Christ and His Resurrection, some beautiful red flowers (whose name escapes me) for Christ's humanity and death on the Cross, and some purple and blue petunias for His divinity (and I believe I remember reading that the purple also represents His Passion).  Three of the plants creep and spread to show how we should spread the Gospel.  He's got an angel garden statue already, and while I was browsing online looking for a garden cross, I got another neat idea:

I am going to decoupage an icon or two to go in the Pascha Garden! I have instructions on decoupaging for outdoor use, and I am ready to go (once I figure out what I am decoupaging onto....)

Which icon(s) should we use? Leave me your suggestions!

Pray for us! God willing, we are going to try to plant in the morning before the rain moves in. Then I imagine I will promptly be taking pain meds and a nap.

3 comments:

  1. What a great idea! I bet he was SUPER excited to see all these flowers! Have you considered adding fertilizer to your other gardens?? Epsom salt? Those things might give those seeds a boost to get going.

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    1. I definitely fertilized, but we didn't have soil, really. So we put the new soil over the old, and planted the Pascha garden right on top! We fertilized that too! When it's time to re-plant in the fall, we'll till this stuff in and add more soil on top again.

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