Lily of the Valley, Bright and Morning Star

St. Francis is happier this year, I think, surrounded in this odd little flower bed along the south side of the house by green and growing things. The east end here has been plagued --- literally --- by drought, ants and the big walnut tree just downhill to the east that soon will leaf out and start spitting noxious juice toward it. But for the time being all is well and concrete Frank rises serenely from a bed of lavender and creeping phlox.

Most of the plants here are native (plucked from the displays at Ellis Greenhouse, by the way, not from roadside or woodland) --- coneflowers, goldenrod, asters, black-eyed susan, etc. The creeping phlox is an exception of course, as are the geraniums --- but I am as addicted to both as a drunk is to his bottle. Lavender isn’t native either, but I can’t pass it up.

The little bird bath --- cheap and impractical --- is new this year. I like it, but it’s cast metal and will rust away and birds tend to see it as a perch rather than a water source. But it’s easy to tip and clean, won’t crush a kid if it gets pulled over and fits in rather than stands out.



Around the corner east and at the north end, behind the garage, is another example of a geranium fancier run amok. Although you can’t see it here, the geraniums at the extreme left are housed in the old coal bucket from the farm. My mother planted geraniums it it, and so do I. The scragliest batch of lavender on the place is in the foreground, old-fashioned day lilies, a few iris, a struggling peony, some sage, lilies of the valley, another big batch of creeping phlox and good old tiger lilies have all been tossed in here and seem to get along fairly well.

The tiger lilies and iris represent resurrection. Last year’s great Easter freeze prevented the iris from blooming and kept the lilies underground all season after getting nipped in the bud, so to speak. This year, the iris are blooming to beat the band and it looks like the tigers will do just fine, too.

The old walking garden cultivator was an unasked-for gift to my dad from a neighbor who accumulated stuff and thought Dad needed it. He didn’t, but it surely did occupy a lot of space in the garage. So I moved it out here --- instant garden sculpture.

Walking around out here early Tuesday morning with camera in hand, the sound track in my head shifted to old-fashioned gospel. I’m never quite sure why those old songs run through my head so much of the time. Certainly not extreme piety; more than likely because in my failed musical career melodies from the old hymnals and schoolhouse songbooks in the music bench were the tunes I was best equipped to bang out with gusto on Aunt Flora’s grand old Kurtzmann upright grand that presided grandly over the dinning room out at the farm (and it was a sight to behold although its untuned state left something to be desired in the sound department).

Although most surely a product of the low church I’ve spent most of my life within or doing battle with the high church --- and those Lutherans and Episcopalians can be downright snippy about the old songs I love. Theologically meaningless and imappropriate, sappy and sentimental, Episcopal priests and Lutheran pastors carp. Back in the old days, when I sang at a lot of funerals, “How Great Thou Art” was a great favorite among Lutheran laypeople, but set Lutheran preachers’ teeth on edge --- to the extent that it wasn’t in Lutheran hymnals. So we’d run over to the Methodist church and swipe (borrow) two of their hymnals, one for the organist and one for me, since they very sensibly did include it.

Lutheran pastoral taste ran to such Nordic classics as "Den store hvide Flok vi se" (“Behold a Host, Arrayed in White”), a real toe-tapper if ever there was one and quite a challenge for a non-Norske to sing.

But what better, I ask you, at 7 a.m. on a May morning than “I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses” (words and music by C. Austin Miles, 1912) with a quick shift as the scent from a lily bed rises to, “He’s the lily of the valley, He’s the bright and morning star?” (Charles W. Fry, 1881, for The Salvation Army, adapting a William S. Hayes tune).

So as I head out the door to the nature center this morning, I’ll leave you with the lead verse and refrain from “The Lily of the Valley” (and you can listen here).

I have found a friend in Jesus, He’s everything to me,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul;
The Lily of the Valley, in Him alone I see
All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.
In sorrow He’s my comfort, in trouble He’s my stay;
He tells me every care on Him to roll.

He’s the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.
He’s the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.