Heaven in a Wild Flower: Spiritual Reflections

In the tradition of Celia Thaxter, Vera Glenn shares what the joy of growing things can mean in a woman's life. The book's title, taken from William Blake, "To see a world in a grain of sand / And Heaven in a Wild Flower," refers to the sacred peace, love, and wisdom of tending a garden.

Bringing alive the wildflower garden she has nurtured for twenty years in vivid botanical detail, Glenn reflects on what the patterns and processes of nature can teach us about ourselves. She enriches her charming persona stories with wisdom from famous nature lovers, writers, and horticulturalists.

The book begins and ends with winter, when the garden is at the ready, waiting for the "forced that through the green fuse drives the flower," in Dylan Thomas's words. Each season brings new flowers and new anecdotal observation about the people who feed Glenn's hunger and propagate and cultivate. Throughout the cycles of her gardening year, Glenn finds spiritual correspondences. The hot, hard work of summer weeding is like "pulling out that nasty thought about my neighbor, nurturing and feeding that tender affection . . . and all the time thanking God."