What's Growing On?

My favorite roses are multi-colored. See for yourself.
Here, for example, is the floribunda rose known as 'Judy Garland':

Can you believe that all three roses are attached to the same plant?

Here's a miniature rose known as 'Hot Tamale':

Finding the right plant combinations is frequently a matter of luck. You plant a pink petunia, for example, and forget that a clear yellow dahlia was planted in the same spot the previous year.
The dahlia starts to bloom and there you have the sulfur yellow next to the pink. You wonder what it would be like if you had dozens of pink petunias alternating with dozens of vivid lemon yellow dahlias. Actually, that might be too much! It might be a fitting flowering touch for a Hollywood starlet but most people would probably avoid bright pink and bright yellow combinations.

Whenever I used to hear that question, I would think, "Gee, why can't gardeners do a better job?" Now when I hear that question I want to say: "Look in the mirror. You are the good gardener you seek. No one can love your garden as much as you!"
But instead, I answer: "Look around the neighborhood. Pick out the garden you like the most. Find out who takes care of it and hire him." It may well be that love is what the person looking for a gardener is truly seeking . . . or at least an expression of love that can be seen once a week, when the gardener comes.

It has been said that the genius of Judaism is knowing how to extract holiness from the mundane, understanding how to make the ordinary extraordinary. Abraham, the first Jew, gave us a model to follow by turning his windblown desert tent into a five star hotel for dust-covered nomads. In the history of the world, there had never been a tent quite like Abraham’s, where parched and impecunious travelers were routinely refreshed with lavish food and drink. When his astonished guests asked how such generosity could have possibly come their way, in the middle of the desert no less, Abraham taught them about God and instructed them how to thank Him, since He alone was responsible for the delicacies they had just consumed.

Later, when Abraham settled in Beersheva, he converted a grove of tamarisks into a hospitality center. Talk about making the ordinary extraordinary . . . Have you ever seen a tamarisk? It is an unwelcoming, amorphous mass of scaly, gray to beige foliage. If you had to pick a hospitality plant, you would most likely think of an unmistakably arboreal species with high arching branches such as ash, elm, or oak. It would be a tree you could put a picnic table under with room to spare. You would sit there quietly without having to push away shaggy overhead growth that was hanging in your face, as is the case with tamarisks; or, you could lie down placidly in its shade without the inconvenience of adventitious shoots or suckers poking up randomly from the ground, a nuisance you may well experience when trying to doze off in a tamarisk’s vicinity.

Most tamarisk species, also known as salt cedars, are distinctively shrubby but there is one species (Tamarix aphylla) which will grow into a 30-50 foot tree in rapid fashion if it is encouraged to do so. This must have been the species planted by Abraham. By fasitdiously removing all new suckers growing around the tamarisk trunk and by rubbing off side shoots budding from the primary limbs, you can develop two or three main scaffold branches that will reach 50 feet in height in a dozen years.

The Hebrew word for tamarisk is eshel, whose three letters (aleph, shin, and lamed) stand for food (ochel), drink (shtiyah), and lodging or escort (lina or levaya). The ultimate host not only satisfies guests’ physical needs but also personally escorts them until they are safely on their way.

Although the eshel or tamarisk is not a glamorous tree, it does provide a cooling effect for those seeking respite from desert heat. It is perhaps this quality which uniquely qualifies the tamarisk as a hospitality tree. The tamarisk’s cooling mechanism has to do with its status as a halophyte, a plant that thrives in salty soil. Foliar salt glands excrete salt particles onto tamarisk leaf tips and, to verify this fact, just lick a bundle of tamarisk leaves; you will come away with a lastingly salty impression. During the night, air moisture condenses onto the salt particles caked on the tamarisk’s leaves. Then, as the weather warms during the day, this same moisture evaporates back into the atmosphere, cooling the air beneath the tree in the process.

It makes sense that Abraham’s hospitality tree should propagate itself with ease. It was not enough for Abraham to show kindness to strangers; he wanted to create a domino effect, where those who benefited from his hospitality would, in turn, show hospitality to others. If you cut shoots from a tamarisk tree and insert them into the ground, they quickly take root and eventually grow into trees themselves.

Abraham was born into a world barren of holiness, where he alone possessed the idealism required to recognize the one true God. Through unflagging demonstrations of kindness, he transformed his world into a place where God would feel at home. In a similar way, perhaps, the tamarisk tree, a vegetative pioneer, will grow in soil that is too salty for any other plant and eventually produce transforming shade under which thirsty human beings, at least, can feel at home, even when wandering in the desert.