All one really needs is some tilled dirt. Today I found three relativity small patches in the yard that I could tame into a garden. Grass and weeds had to be dug out and I gave the soil a turn with a garden claw. All very rewarding work in spite of my complaining back.
My little family garden will be in three smallish portions, two in the back yard and one in the front… and that’ll do 🙂 Seeds for my favourite vegetables are waiting to be sown and five lovely tomato plants are gracing my counter till I wrestle the tomato cages apart. Although the work is hard, and I have no proof the sown garden will produce, the process its self brings me great pleasure.
This years garden needs to be a humble one so I kept my seed purchases to around 20 dollars and hope to shield the garden, from my rambunctious dog and four children, with some fur boards I have and some decent sized rocks I hope to collect free of charge from friends and neighbours.
When I was a child the garden was family time… hard working family time. We spent many a morning out working the gardens with Mom and Dad. Besides their green house business, they had a farmers market garden business each summer. Fields of corn and other veggies filled our small northern bush farms upper and lower fields. I specifically remember loathing the hoeing of the potatoes. It was sweaty demanding work and yet I remember many a day spent laughing and teasing through out it all. My Mom, my Dad, the boys and I were a team. There was great reward to this labour and it wasn’t just in the eating… although a favourite movie snack of ours was a bucket of fresh peas and the carrots often where snatched during a game of ‘garden thieves’, then enjoyed up a tree where no one could find us. We were also permitted to gather some and sell it at the road for spare cash. A great idea on my parents part. We felt so mature and independent and capable, especially once our pockets were full of spending cash and our wheel barrel empty of the produce.
Being in the dirt is addictive, the more I work it the more I desire to fill it with flowers and vegetables. Green houses call to me and I can’t help poking my nose into them, hoping for a deal. Perhaps it is spring in my bones, or the fresh air and birds making me grin, or the fact that May means GARDEN to me! It is all of this and more… it is right to seek to provide for your family and right to find cheer in hard work. Gardening is a responsible and delightful hobby. I hope to continue to grow in skill and garden plot size 🙂
As I gardened today I prayed silently, not all the seeds he has planted in me have grown… but there is still hope, he is my hope that I will always continue to grow. I think it is good to remember not every seed will sprout but that we are to continue to be sowers, scattering the seed. Jesus, after all, commanded us to go and make disciples of man. We are to be workers in the growth and maturation of his kingdom, his good and fruitful crop. He is waiting for willing labourers and I pray he continues to transform my heart into a useful worker!
“So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.”
~James 1:21 (The Message)~
Always Lady Mac and Rothaich
TTFN
