An enchanting 220-page, coffee-table devotional book filled with beautiful photographs of Pennsylvania gardens as well as many  images of national and state parks.

Intimate honesty will make you homesick for Eden. Biblical messages and gardening quotes dig deep into the thought that if God placed man in a garden at the beginning of time, maybe, a garden is a compass. It was the first place man and God walked side by side. It was the place we parted ways. Since Eden, every time the light breaks through the forest canopy, the snow begins to fall or a waterfall crashes into the rocks there is a longing in the echoes. When all the world around us seems like a desert, gardens are a well from which we can draw up memories of beauty and the place God still waits to meet us. These are the observations of a girl grown from a seedbed in Pennsylvania who learned to see the beauty of roots anchored in coal mines, the purpose of weeds and the beautiful truth about compost. The closets of the farmhouse my family called home hid a few thorns. Weeds grew between us, and there was a compost pile as big as the barn that few ever saw. The gardening often looked like mud-wrestling. Every season required us to prepare for the next. Despite unpredictable weather, the maple syrup was sweet and heart-shaped rocks often melted even in winter. Beautiful things could be gathered in our arms and ugly things pulled away with our hands. The good memories trellised our hearts to each other. The hard stuff cultivated soil fertilized by the storms. 

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning of time." Ecclesiastes 3:11 

• Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, PA
• Mary S. Biesecker Public Library, Somerset, Pa
• Ligonier Valley Library, Ligonier, Pa
• St. Paul's Presbyterian Library, Somerset, Pa
• Highland's Community Library, Johnstown, Pa