Gardening

I run my fingers through my hair, grasping it together in a large clip. Tendrils hang down damply against my neck. Smoke from the local wildfires fills my nostrils as I bend over to weed the small garden bed. The weeds have taken hold of the soil while I was away for two weeks.

“Why do you keep trying to raise a garden?” asks my fourteen year old son. It is a legitimate question. I have tried for years to raise a vegetable garden but with little success. I travel too much in the summer, and the weeds squeeze out the produce. Sometimes drought kills my budding plants before I can return to douse the green shoots with life-giving water.

I don’t have an answer to his question. Why do I sweat and toil, pulling muscles and breaking nails, blistering hands and burning my neck when all I get are a few cucumbers and a handful of tomatoes? It makes such little sense when I can easily go to the market and buy beautiful vegetables, but I do it year after year.

The answer lies deep in my soul. A primal urge courses through my veins to be a part of the Creator, to plant and grow, to continue the process that was begun so long ago. To return to a simpler time, to be quiet and meditate, turning soil to the never-ending rhythm of which I have no control, this is my answer.

My son cannot comprehend this need to work so hard for so little. I remember a time when I also didn’t appreciate the hot days in a garden pulling weeds and tossing out rocks. My grandfather would hoe around the little plants, and I would pick up the unwanted weeds. There’s no way I will garden when I grow up I thought to myself. But here I am hoeing, planting, weeding, and occasionally reaping a small harvest.

Perhaps someday my son will find himself in a plot of soil turning over its cool wetness, drinking in the smell of fresh earth, and marveling at the miracle of seed propagation. The innate drive to be a part of something greater than himself will draw him to the side of the Creator as they walk together through the garden.

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I wrote that last year, obviously, #1 is 15 years old now. I thought I would post it as I tell the world that I have given up the garden. I have struggled with it all summer. Not with the garden, but with the decision to give it up.
I kept thinking that once school was out, I would have time to go at it. Then it became once we return from WV, because I don't have to go anywhere the rest of the summer. Then I decided to help my mother after her surgery in August, and so now I have a two week hiatus from Eastern Carolina. Not a good idea in a place where weeds propogate at an alarming rate.
So as I lay in bed last week thinking through all of the things I need to do, I decided the garden was one I could scratch off of my list. My reasoning is that the rest of the family doesn't eat vegetables the way that I do and what little I get out of the garden often goes bad before it gets eaten. So it is better for me to do what I do best and give up on what I don't do as well.
Then I cleaned and washed the refrigerator. While cleaning it out, I came across the Ziploc bag of garden seeds that I keep. I stared at the packages of lettuce, beans, and corn. Well, I started to reason, the family does eat those things... and I left the seeds sitting on the countertop. Temptation.
It isn't a temptation to hard work, sweat, and sore muscles. It is a temptation to a way of life. As the post above shares, I feel closer to my Creator when I walk in the garden with him. But the more I think about time with the Creator, the more I realize that a garden is just another version of busy-ness that turns my life into a struggle.
So walking past the seed bag I dropped them into the trash bin. Sometimes you have to put the beautiful Devil right where he belongs.