English Country Gardens.

                                                                                                                          “How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English Country Garden? We’ll tell you now of some that we know. Those we miss, you’ll surely pardon. Daffodils, heart’s ease and phlox, gentian, lupine and tall hollyhocks, meadowsweet and lady smocks, roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots. In an English Country Garden.” – Lyrics by Jimmie Rodgers.

This was one of my favorite children’s songs.

The opening scene in my next release, a Regency, takes place in the heroine’s enclosed garden, so naturally I want to have one on the cover.

As you can tell from my research pictures, there are many flowers growing in an English garden. Too many for a book cover. As beautiful as those flowers are, they can’t compete with the subjects.

You’ll notice that the gardens of great estates were quite formal, laid out with precision and detail. The country garden, however, were less formal. The flowers seem artlessly placed, as if they’d just sprung up where nature put them. Nothing could be further from the truth, though.

I know. My mother had such a garden with meandering paths. Pansies, phlox and lilies competed with each other in front of azalea, bride’s wreath, and roses. Some places were sparse, others crowded. Flowering shrubs and small trees were allowed to spread out. They provided wonderful hiding places for a little girl to play house.

Of all these English garden pictures, which would you say I should choose for my book cover?

Comment on any post through Apr 16 to win a copy of Bonnie Leon’s Return to the Misty Shore.

God's Wildflowers

Photo by Catherine Castle

“Nevertheless, there are good things found in thee.” 2 Chronicles 19:3

We’ve been traveling a lot this summer to various locations across the United States. As we sped down the grey strip of highway on our last trip to Missouri, I couldn’t help but notice the wildflowers along the road brightening the green landscape. White Queen Anne’s lace frosted the hollows, and waving green stems dotted with tiny blue and yellow flowers covered the edge of the road. Plate-sized white blooms, resembling hibiscus, trailed over fences and climbed corn stalks, obviously weeds to the farmers and very out of place in the gigantic corn fields sporting yellow tassels. 

I couldn’t identify the weedy blue and yellow wildflowers, but I know they, along with the Queen Anne’s lace, are not things most gardeners cultivate in their gardens. In fact, we try to eradicate such things from our home landscapes. Yet, all these flowers are beautiful in drifts along the road and I love to look at them.

Like a gardener who wants an immaculately groomed flowerbed, God couldn’t tolerate the weeds of sin in his garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed and blighted the landscape with sin, God yanked them out of his unspoiled garden and tossed them outside the fence. Even though they were no longer inside the boundaries of the garden gates, God still saw Adam’s and Eve’s, and ultimately our, potential for beauty. Through Christ’s sacrifice, He provided a way for us all to become part of his garden once again.  

As I admired the weedy, flower-filled berms and hollows along the roadway, I whispered a “Thank you,” to God for being able to see the beauty of weeds in bloom. Because, except for the grace of God, I am only a weed along the roadside, waiting for a home in a perfect garden of Eden.

Do you see the beauty of wildflowers in a landscape?