The Sedum and the apple tree 2026

First here is a friend of Job, Eliphaz giving his friend who has lost so much some advice:

Receive the law from His mouth and store them in your heart.

Job then answers: I have not gone back from His commandments from His lips, I have respected the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.

Yet even having God’s word didn’t prevent Job from having a terrible time. This poem of human experience was written by Moses,a prophet of God, with its obvious setting in that of the Arabian desert culture. An amazing encounter between God, Satan, close friends and a rich family. An amazing story.

Then there is James writing in about AD 40.

Wherefore my friends, let every person be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to get angry.

For the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.

So get rid of filthiness, and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your soul.

James 1: 19 – 21

Can we answer with Job that in Jesus we have done this?

Let us now look at our garden plant sedum. The one bought as a stem with a broccoli – like flower head that changed from pale pink to red to finally rust brown. We were travelling and stayed near Cambridge and it was in the Cambridge Botanical gardens I saw it and liked it for its healthy looks. It then went into one of grandad Brian’s black buckets with bottle tops as feet, to grow on for a year or so. No snails got it in there, and from there it went into a garden bed, where it grew to a size, that when it flopped over during one autumn it was covering the chives and several other plants. I have several posts that include this plant. Today it is with the chives and a few stray bluebells which we have been officially told came out two weeks early in 2026. The Sedum also has a new plant in the foreground of the photograph below, I grew it from seed in 2025 and it has weathered the winter, it is a scabious. I am expecting maroon flowers on it.

From left to right: chives, blue bells, sedum (autumn joy), and the new scabious. All in a sunny garden.

Now for a poem about plants.

Plants

P roduce pulpably privately

L eft

A lone among and around assertively amiable bee associates

N oble they are, yet often we notoriously neglect them and leave them

T o grow shoots to the right to the left and roots down and around naturally placed

S toic, standing, safe in themselves.

PLANTS!

Our apple tree. It is a cooking apple: a Bramley, a Crispin, Howgate, Wonder, Prince Albert or a Bountiful, I do not know which, but I do know that three years after its crown was taken, it is doing very well.

A rose of a blossom for the joy of a large apple in October/November…

…and many more.

We are so pleased with the old apple tree

and the tortured willow behind in full fresh green,

then the wind swung red hammock between these two trees, at the same level at its dip as the sedum.

The sedum, apple tree and tortured willow the ‘oldies/ grandies’ of the garden.

Take care,

Sandy 🙂

Ps

This made me smile:

‘ My fake plants died because I didn’t pretend to water them. ‘

Mitch Hedberg