Echoes of Eden, whispers of Paradise
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Echoes of Eden, whispers of Paradise

By the time you read this, I’ll be almost recuperated from two months of extreme gardening. Last fall we left for Florida without accomplishing much cleanup, so this past April consisted of endless days of raking leaves and clearing debris. May was all about weeding, planting and pruning. But June is sheer gratification. Time to sit back and marvel.

Colossians 1: A foundation for earth care
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Colossians 1: A foundation for earth care

I received a distressing email from a friend who had encountered a group of climate-change denying Christians. These evangelical Christians, some of whom depend on the continued success of the oil sands directly or indirectly, apparently think that the whole climate change issue is somehow a ruse of anti-Christian forces bent on duping the world.

Autumn psalm
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Autumn psalm

What would David have said about Ontario in autumn? Of the explosion of colour in our forests – and what would he have written about our hills, far as the eye can see, on fire with red and gold and yellow? Would he have seen a metaphor for the way that God makes everything new – sometimes through literal flame, often through figurative flame – through the dying of the old ways to make way for what’s next?

A land of lawns
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A land of lawns

A nice piece of well-tended lawn is just the thing to introduce you to gardens, a patch of forest or perennial beds. A lawn is also a habitat for some creatures: robins thrive by using lawns as food buffets, as do rabbits (nasty nibblers) and swallows that swoop and dive for open-air insects.