In The South Garden

Old fashioned hymns and garden weeds are an unlikely pairing, but in my mind they seem to be closely connected.  I think it’s because years ago, when I was still teaching and my dad needed help in the garden, Sunday afternoons were a likely time for me to spend a few hours going after buttercups and dandelions.  Even in summer, I sometimes skipped Vespers and did my ‘yard duty’ instead.

Often I’d work in the south garden.  Located, as it is, just across from the church, I could enjoy the music from my ignominious position (on hands and knees) behind the fence while I wrestled with nature’s bounty.  Most of the hymns were familiar to me and I would sing along.  It’s a habit that stuck – singing hymns while weeding.

An Old Favorite

Most of those wonderful old hymns are from John Wesley’s A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, first published at Charlestown, South Carolina in 1737.  They are the ones we sing in the Oysterville Church largely because our collection of hymnals are hand-me-downs from the Methodist Church in Ocean Park.  Never mind that our church was originally of Baptist persuasion.

But, more importantly to me, those are the hymns I learned when I attended Dorothy Elliott’s Camp Willapa (just north of Nahcotta) from 1942 to 1950.  She, too, apparently had been the recipient of old Methodist hymnals and her answer to the disintegrating bindings was to cut out the hymns and carefully paste them on the pages of Readers Digest magazines.

Dratted Bindweed

On Sunday evenings we campers would gather at the main building, “The Ark,” for our weekly Sing-Song.  We sat on the living room floor in front of the big stone fireplace, Miss Elliott would sit at piano, the ‘hymn books’ were passed ’round and, by turns, we would choose the next song to sing.  I loved that hour each week!  I can still hear the crackle of the fire providing counterpoint to the piano and our young voices “making a joyful noise unto the Lord…”

All good memories when it comes to hymns!  Sometimes it’s Miss Elliott’s voice saying “This Is My Father’s World – Number 45” or maybe, as the shadows grow long, “Now The Day Is Over – Number 495.”  And, I sing along.  Conversely (or, perhaps, perversely) whenever I see that stupid bindweed (which is seemingly everywhere in the garden) I can hear Miss Elliott announce, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds – Number 306” and the words and music float unbidden into consciousness.  Well… I guess it’s better to sing than to curse!