Poison in My Garden by R.F. Whong

Every year in December, I always look through my diary, review the major events of the year, and offer praise to God for His protection and grace.

A lot of things happened this year. We went to Europe twice; I published three books…

I found one record in my diary, which seemed like a trivial thing, and I’ve almost forgotten about it. But it actually could be an event of life-and-death significance.

I enjoy gardening. Every summer, I pack my small garden with flowers and vegetables. Some of them are self-seeding, such as celery, which is easy to grow and delicious. I especially appreciate those kinds of plants.

In April this year, I saw four celery plants sprouting in the garden. How wonderful they grow back year after year.

A week in June, before our trip to Europe, I went to the garden with great enthusiasm and picked a handful of celery. I planned to stir-fry them with pork. After washing and chopping, I was about to put them into the pot when a voice in my heart told me to watch out.

Why? Watched out for what? Was it from the Holy Spirit?

I stopped what I was doing to smell the celery on the cutting board.

Strange, why didn’t it smell like celery?

Then, my fingers that had touched the plants felt a little numb.

My heart skipped a beat. I picked up my phone and rushed to the garden. I opened the apps for identifying plants and scanned the few celery plants. My jaw dropped at the results on the screen.

Poison celery! Hemlock!

I searched online and found that it is an extremely poisonous plant that can affect nerves. The story I read about the Greek philosopher Socrates came to my mind. The Athenian courts convicted him of impiety. Rather than renouncing his beliefs, he chose to die by drinking poisonous hemlock.

I called Ken, and we went to dig out the poisonous plants. We were worried that the garbage collectors would be poisoned, so we wrapped them carefully before dumping them.

Thinking about it now, I can’t imagine what would have happened if we ate it that day. Even if we didn’t die, we would probably stay in the hospital for a while. Our trip to Europe would definitely have been affected. Praise God for His protection. To this day, I still can’t figure out how those few poisonous weeds sneaked into my vegetable garden.

 

 

R.F. Whong

While in high school, I used to go to the library, read every book on one shelf, and then move on to the next. Reading and writing are very important to me. It seems I have a longing that can’t be satisfied by reality. I love to escape into books and become someone graceful, witty, and popular.

Currently, I work for a small biotech company and have published 120+ scientific books and papers (under a different name). I’m a latecomer to creative writing. So far, I’ve published three books. Here are the links for my books:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m married to my wonderful husband, a retired pastor who encourages me to pursue my dreams. We served together at three different churches from 1987 to 2020.

I would love to connect with you. You can drop me a note anytime at ruthforchrist.com. The following are my gifts to anyone who sends me a request note.

• Free article about relationship per request.
• Free handmade Christian bookmarks per request: The bookmarks are embedded in articles on my website (e.g., see “THINK: Your words matter” under Blog – previous articles). I’ll pay the shipping fee (U.S. only).