How does your garden grow?

by Sister Ann Marie Emon

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.”

How does my flower garden grow?  I know it needs good soil, water, weeding and deadheading.   What about how to plant the flowers and whether they are perennials or annuals?  Truthfully, I learn as I go along.  Some of the flowers I know by name but many I do not know.  For instance, begonias are one of my favorite flowers.  They are sturdy with deep green leaves.  Salvias are beautifully scented.  I learned that their foliage does not attract deer, bunnies, and other garden pests and if people want to remove these pests, they can check Mosquito Authority.  Day lilies love the sun.  They will flower for years.  The flower Live Forever also will grow for years.  These flowers are located right in front of Rosary Care Center.

The other night while I was watering the plants, a monarch butterfly flew from one flowering plant to another.  The sight was breath taking!  That whole garden reminded me of the many people who pass by it every day.  Each person is a unique integral part of Rosary Care Center.  People come as residents, visitors or employees. “Rosary Care Center is sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis so together we all respond to God’s call to live the Gospel in joyful servanthood among all people through lives and ministries that reverence human dignity, embrace the poor and marginalized, and respect the gift of all creation.”  Our partners in ministry here at Rosary Care Center live out their lives as nurses, aides, dietary personnel, administrators, beauticians, housekeepers and in mission integration.  Each person makes up a part of the garden that this ministry calls to us.  Each person is unique just as flowers are unique. Both people and flowers give honor and glory to God.

Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si reminds us “each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection…Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness.  Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature”. (43)

So the next time you walk by the flower garden or you greet a father coming to visit his mother, remember how blessed we all are with God’s love.