November 6th: Sunday afternoon I pulled the flax and put the bundles of flax in the spaces of the picket fence where they can "ret" for a few months. I really do not know much about the flax to linen process, but I am learning one step at a time. Monday we had a killing frost so I planted the wheat seed on the ground where I had just pulled the flax. Then I put the frosted bottle gourd vines on top of the wheat seed. We had 1/2" of rain on Tuesday; so the wheat seed should be in good shape. My figs have not gotten ripe. The cotton has done well. I have 45 bottle gourds; some are hanging on the fence out side and some are drying in the house.

Art Hadley
In the fall of 2001 we planted more than 1,000 bulbs in two plots of wheat to create the lilies of the field. We also planted a weeping mulberry (alba), roses, wild olive (Russian olive), and Hypericum (St. John's Wort). We have ordered rosemary, "Chicago" fig (hardy to zone 5), apricot, tamarisk, grape and more. We are raising from seed or cuttings fig, olive, pomegranate, and date palm as a Sunday school project.

The design from east to west is: Garden of Eden, Egypt, Sinai, Land of Milk and Honey, Jesse tree (the Mulberry) New Testament, Resurrection (mostly Lilies), and Monastic Herbal. The garden grows at the south side of our educational building and on the south side is the fenced playground which is mostly gravel giving us a nice desert. In the center of the garden linking the garden with the play ground will be a pergola with seating - either private meditation or an out door class room.

We are located only a few blocks away from St. Michael's, Worthington, and Liberty Presbyterian is 5 mile north; both on your list of Biblical gardens.

The other St. John's gardens include a cemetery dating from 1803 with over ten thousand daffodils, a section of prairie, and a woodland labyrinth. (See photos above.) Flower beds also line the cemetery paths. In front of an English Tudor style parish house is an English style garden of roses, lilies, hostas, asters, box wood, etc. In front of the Church is a spring display of tulips and other spring bulbs and azalea.

Summer 2002 - the Latest News!

I have harvested the wheat. After 50+ years of reading the Bible, and gardening I really understand the "beauty of the flowers of the field." The spring bulbs growing and blooming in the wheat has been beautiful from February crocus through July roses and lilies.

Now a new learning. "Consider the lilies of the field they neither spine nor reap..." I had read that in the Near East flax seed is sown in the growing wheat after frost free date. So I did. I could harvest the wheat without cutting the flax, and now the wheat stubble has blue flax blooming in it. The harvest flax when it is mature or frosted pull it up by the roots in order to have the longest linen fiber. By pull it up by the roots the ground in broken enough to re plant the wheat. I never understood why Jesus coupled spinning and reaping, but it makes sense if the wheat and flax are grown together. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, " I may be an old man, but I am a young gardener." - Art

My fig trees have figs!

Stay tuned for the rest of the garden's growth!