I am planting Gardenia's everywhere around the Shack so the fragrance will hover over the Property. Perhaps the Incense of Heaven on Earth will take root.
The idea was brought to mind in early summer when the Gardenias bloomed. The scent still lingers from the flowers I picked for my wife one early June morning. Smiling, she pressed them in her favorite books as she whispered, "The perfume is always sweeter with age!" I laughed and said, "The Wine in the Bottle!" Inspired, I have begun to make cuttings from that special Gardenia bush. The Gardenia symbolizes Grace; it has been associated with the visiting scent of Saints. I find pleasure in growing plants, something I've learned through trial and error. To me, it is one form of co-creating in harmony with that mysterious purpose of Nature. For the aging and disabled, it definitely can become a synergistic exercise: Spiritual (co-creating, cultivating in harmony), Physical (hands-on shovel and pail, caressing the soil over a stem) and Mental (visualizing, mapping the completed growth) --a practice that can't be accomplished at the Gym! I have had good results with all kinds of plants, from cactus to fruit trees, making cuttings--an ancient form of cloning! While there are many sites on the internet with pictures and techniques, my simple way is: I find a fresh green stem about 6 inches long, cut it with a sharp knife--oval with a point not straight across, leave 2 or 3 green leaves at the top, moisten the stem, then poke it in powdered root stimulator. Poke a hole in any pot filled with potting soil, insert the stem, keeping it moist, not wet, for several weeks, out of direct sun. In a month's time, the Gardener becomes the Midwife for Nature, handing over the sprouts to a proud new day. A new birth, a resurrection, occurs in the plant! In this harmony with Nature, we too are renewed. Here is a wonderful description of this miracle:
Cuttings (Later) by Theodore Roethke
“This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet. “
Perhaps in a few years, we can get can get together, you and I down by the Shack, have tea or coffee and inhale deeply the scented breeze of Heaven on Earth, Rooted in the form of Gardenias! (With a little help of co-creation!)
