Garden of Life

I never cease to be amazed by my itty bitty veggie garden. This schoolhouse of horticulture measures a scant 5' by 20'. This morning's garden walkabout reminded me just how little we are in control. I was raised around gardens, yet gardening knowledge is not something generally obtained through osmosis. It is trial and error lessons. It is reading and planning, pruning and pampering. It is watching our Creator in action as His systems play out before our eyes.

I like to experiment as I learn. I like to try my hand at growing things I've never attempted before. This can be very rewarding or disappointing but always educational. One lesson I have learned was to take my hands off of some things and just leave them to nature and God. I know enough to put a little food on the table every year. I'm learning that I do not know just how much I do not know. So, I watch the Master Gardener and glean what I can.

One lesson I learned was to let things go to seed. This makes room for God's plan when I get my plan out of the way. Things like cilantro and Italian parsley bolt (put on seed heads) early because of our hot weather. I enjoy them while I can, then let them have their way. The flowers of the seed heads attract bees and hummingbirds which help pollinate other plants. Once the plant dries out, not looking healthy with new growth, the little seeds make their way into the soil and wait. Some blow out of the herb garden. My herb garden is in a canoe we found discarded by the side of the road a few years ago. It looked sad when we found it but now it teams with life year after year, season after season. I haven't had to plant cilantro or parsley in years! God's plan for seed time and harvest takes care of all the work. I simply add water and pull weeds. It is common to find cilantro growing in the ground around the canoe. The rabbits love it.

I have butter crunch lettuce thriving in my veggie bed at this very moment. Usually a cooler weather crop, the lettuce I actually planted last fall never produced anything worth harvesting; it failed miserably. After being allowed to go to seed and ignored, I have more lettuce than I planted in the first place!

My best example of accidental gardening was a complete surprise. One year when the kids were still here, I asked grandson Daniel to get some tomatoes from the garden for dinner. He headed out the front door. I reminded him the tomatoes were in the back yard right outside the door. He asked why I didn't want any from the front. I explained, becoming less patient, that dinner was almost ready and I needed the tomatoes right then so please go out back and bring some in. He complied but said, as he exited the back door, that the tomatoes in the front looked really good. I was perplexed. Daniel is a bright child and I didn't understand why we were having that conversation!

When he returned I asked why he thought we had tomatoes in the front. He simply said, "Because we do!" Wanting to clear this up and now extremely curious, I asked him to show me. He took me out to our front deck and pointed over the rail on the steep end. There, below about six feet in what can only be called a wasted excuse of foundation dirt, was a huge tomato plant spilling over the edge of the railroad ties, dropping down the four feet to the ground and running out into what we call yard. It was covered in huge clusters of tomatoes; some brilliant red, others bright green, but tons of tomatoes! They were larger than cherry tomatoes but smaller than a Roma. I was stunned and amazed. I apologized to Daniel for thinking he had lost his mind.

You see, I compost kitchen scraps. That pitiful excuse of a bed is where all that organic stuff is deposited. One day I hope to have real dirt in there and can make it beautiful thanks to those scraps. This includes but is not limited to: veggie peelings, coffee grounds, egg shells, veggie and fruit too gooey for consumption, etc. Apparently, at some point tomato scrapes made their way into that bed; God took over and blessed us with an abundance of healthy, radiant tomatoes!

The moral of this story is that we need to watch and learn from the Master Gardener. We need to learn when to take our hands off of things and trust in God's plan. All our planning and executing can get in the way of the bountiful harvest God wants to pour out into our lives. We have to do our part but the important thing is learning exactly what our part is. In the garden, it's watering and weeding. In life, it's working at the task He gives us. Mostly, it's staying out of His way, trusting enough to give up control and appreciating the harvest. You will be amazed!