The Hot Winds of the Heights challenge and stress even the toughest plants. Each morning in the early cool, I tend the cloves of garlic planted in the rich volcanic soil about six weeks ago, several weeks into the start of summer in northern Israel. Planting had been delayed about two weeks, so rootlets were appearing, and it wasn't the optimal time of year.
But rarely do we get to control all the circumstances of life, in spite of our best efforts to have things "perfect!" Are you perhaps one of those people who insist on the "perfect" climate---one degree hotter or one degree too cool and you're off to the complaining stump? But even if the garlic was capable of complaining, nothing was to be gained in any case: it was either into the ground or wither, shrivel, and die.
Every blessing and skill of soil, water, fertilizer, protective shade, and constant vigilance for competing weeds---every morning and many evenings---and I watched for the first signs of life.
Results: Some cloves rotted in the moist rich soil...
Some cloves sent a vigorous shoot that got out of the ground an inch or
so, then withered in the searing heat...
Some cloves I uncovered an inch or so relieving the burden of the heavy
soil over-head... they greened up, but couldn't sprout new life...
One clove was planted upside down: couldn't right itself---dead!
One clove tossed on its side when covered valiantly sent a shoot upward
(not sidewards) to the sun, and still survives...
Several cloves have sprouted small tender growing points---still alive...
And then there are the twelve or so plants which are
already a foot to eighteen inches high! They thrive and really will do
even better in the full sun!
So perhaps the parable of the garlic goes like this---
The Heat Reveals All Things about the Garlic!The Heat Reveals All Things about Us!The Heat Reveals God and the Gardener!Shalom from the Heights!
