In the past my husband and I have just barely dabbled in gardening. Even now I feel like we are just masquerading as gardeners when it comes to a vegetable garden---but this year we have taken more serious strides toward becoming genuine gardeners. I read several online articles about square foot gardening (I now have The book on square foot gardening by Mel Bartholomew--he makes gardening look so easy anyone can do it--even me) and we added some good soil and highly recommended local compost to our three grow boxes. We divided each box into 12 inch sections, my husband made some vertical trellises for the tomatoes, peas, and pumpkins, and we put up a fence to keep our wild dogs out. We were diligent in protecting our plants from a couple of unseasonable cold spells and we are faithfully watering and weeding. So far so good!
Gardening really is therapeutic. It has been said many times and in many ways but there is something about getting your hands in the dirt---planting, weeding, watering, harvesting--- that feels very human--very right--and something very much more...I have always found it satisfying on some deeper level (or perhaps higher level?)of existence to find such natural comparisons between gardening and life.
Two bare root berry bushes were on sale--one blueberry and one blackberry. We know nothing about growing berry bushes--let alone bare root berry bushes but we were buying things to plant and we could feel the beginnings of a green thumb stirring within us--so we added them to the cart and planted them with no knowledge and lots of hope. I lovingly referred to them for the first few weeks as our little stick plants. We watered them and put peat moss around them to help warm the soil during our Spring cold spell. The sturdiest looking of the two sent out a runner that looks very promising but the other little stick remained a stick. My husband didn't hold out much hope for it but I insisted on continuing to water it because it was still mostly green. Today I saw that our feeble little stick has also sent out a little runner. It is alive!
Life lesson: Don't give up on something that isn't showing immediate promise. Within a stick is the potential to become a flourishing bush that will bear delicious fruit--within an unimpressive, lowly looking human being is potential for a great productive person.
Another item in a sale bin that we knew nothing about was some shallots. Soon after I planted them, two of the three sprouted and started to grow. I watered all three but I saw no signs of the other one growing so I finally stopped watering it. Well only a couple of days after I stopped watering it the non-growing shallot sprouted! It wasn't a dud as I had started to suspect, it was just slower than the others. Why did I give up on the shallot but not the berry bush? I think part of the reason was because the berry bush stood alone. I couldn't completely compare it to the other bush because it was a different kind of bush. The shallot on the other hand was sharing the same 12 inch square of soil with others of its kind that were actually growing.
Life lesson: How helpful are comparisons? How fair are we in our expectations? How many people go without receiving life-giving things like love and attention? There are many unwatered plants of the human variety sitting in classrooms, offices, churches, and even homes.
C.S. Lewis said, It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be srongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. Who are we helping to grow and who are we leaving unwatered?
I have a problem especially in my flower garden of distinguishing desirable plants from weeds, especially when the weeds grow very close to the plants. It is definitely good and necessary to stay on top of weeds in a garden so the weeds don't take over but in the flower garden as well as the vegetable garden it is sometimes necessary to let the plants grow and mature a bit before we are able to safely and successfully pull up the weeds without pulling up the plants.
Life Lesson: We learn about the wisdom of this in the New Testament in Matthew---The parable of the wheat and the tares. The sower tells his servants to let the wheat and the tares grow up together until the time of harvest and then the tares can be removed without uprooting the wheat. Too many times I have been so worried about the 'weeds' in my children that I have been too quick to pull them out with nagging and lectures and I have harmed the delicate and growing 'wheat'. It is important to be watchful for life's weeds growing in our children do our very best to keep them from taking root but it is also important to not be so focused on weeding that we neglect our tender and patient nurturing.
Beyond a nice looking or well producing garden I want to make sure I appreciate and use what I grow.
Life Lesson: I think we need to show our children not only the miracle of a plant growing from a seed, or the benefits of hard work in keeping a garden, but we need to show them how to harvest the fruits of their labors, how to benefit from those fruits, how to share their harvest, and how to lay things up in store.
If I think too much about all of these analogies I will be even more intimidated by gardening and by life...But I will just keep pulling weeds, watering, hoping, and praying my garden to grow. Three garden boxes can yield quite the bounteous harvest of produce and life lessons.
Happy growing!
