Grafted Growth

Psalm 104:14 -- He makes grass grow for the cattle and plants for people to cultivate - bringing forth food from the earth."

 

Blue Tinted Dahlia

As the rich, moist soil pushed itself further under my fingernails I took a minute to stretch out my back and breath in that wonderful earthy smell. I love to piddle with plants. I am not good at it, but I do love to try. I love the hope that springs eternal when you gently remove a budding life from the starter pot and tenderly fold it into the fertile soil of a dish garden. I love watching the stalks and stems grow bright and healthy - strong enough to support fresh little flower buds. I love the smell of wet catnip, freshly picked rosemary, and the new hybrid chocolate-mint plant I'm trying to coax back to life. There's just something about diving into damp earth up to the elbow with a late summer sun baring down on your shoulders, a swift cool drink from the garden hose and giant night crawlers trying to hide when you accidentally unearth them.

In my eagerness to learn all that I can about herbal gardens in order to use fresh ingredients for my hand-crafted soaps/bath products, I am keen to get a good handle on growing my own plants. I've learned that my chocolate-mint was root-bound and hope to remedy that by dividing and replanting [a thing I have only just learned]. It amazes me - all the things it takes to grow a garden really well.

And I stand in awe and marvel over a new study on grafting.

As flowers go, the bright, lush fulness of a Dahlia is a favorite of mine. I recently saw a blue one - I kid you not - an actual blue Dahlia. The thing is, Dahlia's don't come in blue. Not naturally, anyway. When they are left to their own devices, they come in wonderful shades of pink, red, orange, yellow and even a combination of those colors - but they just don't grow blue . . . unless they have a whole lot of help.

Simple Grafting Chart

HOW!?

Good question.

One way to get a Dahlia, or any plant for that matter, to behave a certain way and provide a certain fruit/look - is to graft the thing to another plant. It's very much like surgery. There is even more than one way to perform the graft, but the gist of the procedure involves making a wound on two plants and binding them to one another until the wounds unite. If it's done right, characteristics from both plants will be included in whatever flowers or fruit are born of the newly united [hybridized] stalk. The results can be truly fascinating and often amazing. With grafting/hybridizing we get things like weeping cherry trees, broccoli, boysenberries, lematos, and of course, blue Dahlias.

The cool thing is, it takes a mixture of different plants to make one unique, strong, and breathtaking hybrid. [I gotta say, I'm really itchin' to try a lemato] The process is a growing one, a tedious one, sometimes painful, but all in all - rewarding. Even if the graft doesn't take you learn from the experience and can apply that knowledge to the next experiment. It is an ever changing and never dull field of study.

Lemon + Tomato = Lemato

When I came across the devotional verse for today, I couldn't help but think of grafting. We humans start out fairly small and lack a personal relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ. If left unattended, we can grow as a physical being, but will lack the richness, the fullness, and glorious "flavor" that comes from knowing our Creator on a personal level. We won't be hardy perennials that bloom year after year in eternal life with Jesus. We'll be annuals that flower for a short time and then whither to compost.

In short, we cannot bloom into something lively and everlasting without being saved by Jesus and then fertilized with God's Word. We need to be grafted into the arms of our Lord. Bound through the grace of Jesus Christ and infused with his love and mercy. Then we can become sturdy, strong, and stable contributions to a wonderfully fruitful garden that will last forever. AND, at the end of this life-cycle - we seedlings in our starer pots can be transplanted into the permanent gardens of God's amazing Heaven.

Like the blue Dahlia - we just can't reach a beautiful, breathtaking form on our own. We've got to be grafted by God.