Tending Our Life Gardens

 Dasha Davis

 “For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.”  Isaiah 61:1

 “Look at this big pepper!” I shout with child-like exuberance to my husband who is at the opposite end of the garden. This year’s bounty of green peppers was disappointingly scarce and I was excited to finally have some. “Look how long this green bean is!” he shouts back to me. As we start the process of harvesting one final time, God helped me to understand connections between our garden and daily struggles in life.    

                  

We pick the last of the green beans, jalapenos, sweet peppers, and tomatoes and place in plastic grocery bags before the forecasted frost kills our garden plants. I have mixed emotions: excited to have more garden vegetables and melancholy to know the gardening season is over. I regret that time and energy prevented us from tending our garden lately because of a change in jobs for my husband and school starting for me.  I fear that our tomatoes and peppers aren’t salvageable due to our lack of time spent taking care of them.

 As I start to walk through the rows, the first thing I notice is the black, mushy, rotten tomatoes and over-growing vines.  I realize that my spiritual and financial life needs tending like the plants in our garden. If I am not careful, I will end up with wasted opportunities and rotten produce if I don’t tend to my “garden” of daily life. 

“Pick everything that you want because it won’t be any good after this weekend,” my husband tells me, as I walk around sprawling vines and try to avoid the damaged tomatoes scattered on the ground. It surprises me that the bad tomatoes are right next to the good – even on the same plant. I am reminded of the natural balance of good and bad, yin and yang, even when sometimes the bad seems to outweigh the good. This was God’s way of telling me that there is hope and not to be discouraged. Good fruit is right around the corner. 

Next to healthy tomato plants, we find a plant that is brown, wilted and pitiful looking - certainly dead.  Sometimes, my spirit feels like this brown and wilted plant: hopeless and certainly not productive. However, I push aside the dead leaves and dig a little deeper, delighted to find a perfectly shaped, sweet, vine-ripened tomato that was hidden from sight on a seemingly dead plant. 

One bad thing happens after another and it seems like there is no hope for fruit.  Even when our spirit seems dead and wilted, we CAN produce something worthwhile with God’s nourishing light shining down on us, like the perfect tomatoes hidden under the wilted leaves.  Sometimes, we just have to push away the dead and decaying leaves of our past and try harder to find the perfect fruit of our tomorrow. 

As we fill up eight plastic bags of our vegetables, I make my way to the edge of the garden literally saying “Goodbye” to the garden for one more season, realizing that change is part of life. There are cold wintery seasons in which challenges and upsets will occur. Remember, though, next spring the seedlings will thrust toward the heavens and brown will slowly turn to green. God’s faithful will overcome life’s obstacles and start to see the bounty of His blessings again, in our freshly tilled garden of life. 

The Garden

The Garden

By Dasha Davis

A change in season brings about a change in behavior as cooler weather creeps in. Our tans slowly fade as our arms and legs get covered, while flip flops are banished to the back of the closet. Darkness demands more and more time from our sun-lit day and the first frost threatens the future of our outdoor plants. As we harvest our beloved vegetables for the last time of the season, I begin to see and appreciate the connections between tending our garden of plants and our garden of life. 

 The art of gardening is fairly new to my husband and me. This is only our 4^th year to even have one, and it seems to get bigger every year. I had no idea how to start a garden that first year. I just knew I wanted one. So, I dug trenches out of the grass with a shovel and plopped in some plants.  I surrounded them with old newspapers to keep weeds out. I knew I did NOT want to pull weeds. When the wind blew, so did my papers, all across the neighbor’s yard. OOPS! I decided to weigh down the papers with bricks. In order to make it look more “natural”, I re-used grass clippings to camouflage the newsprint. It.   was.   a.   sight! – a true, red-neck garden. 

Our gardening process has come a long way in those four short years. Nowadays, the planning starts early.  Before winter is even over, we get our seed catalogs out and start discussing what plants we want for the upcoming season. We compare how well certain plants did and if we want to try something new. We make our wish list of things to order from Burpee Seed Company, map out the rows with the proper spacing on graph paper, and label where each plant will go. Somehow, thinking about our garden chases away the winter doldrums!

            As soon the ground is thawed, my husband starts tilling and working fertilizer into the dark, rich soil, at least 6 or 7 times before any plants even go into the ground.  Before it is warm enough to plant, he starts seeds just inside the window sill. He sprays the dirt daily with a clear plastic water bottle and labels popsicle sticks to identify each and every plant. There is something about watching a buried seed start to sprout that makes you appreciate the miracle and beauty of life. My twelve year old even got into the spirit this past spring with his choice of marigold seeds that he would spray daily, without fail. Oh, The Elation! when they start to peak out of the soil as the bright, warm, sun pours in through the back porch window. 

When planting time FINALLY arrives, we gather our fragile starter plants, seeds, twine (for measuring straight rows), scissors, hoe, trowel, rake, and the clipboard with the graph paper map. Once everything is planted, chicken wire is un-rolled around the perimeter and zip-tied to metal stakes for a make-shift fence in hopes of deterring rabbits and the neighbors’ dogs. 

            My husband nurtures the garden, routinely watering and checking on it when he comes home from work. Every year it gives us great joy to see how much the plants have grown or to pick newly ripened tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, or zucchini to eat for dinner that night. It is truly a labor of love.

One can imagine how PANICKED we were when we got a notice from our small town that we were on water restrictions due to the draught this summer. We couldn’t let our garden JUST DIE! Of course, I realize this is irrational. It is more important to have drinking water and be able to wash clothing and flush toilets… especially the flushing toilets part.  (read quietly), I suspect a “water ninja” came at night and watered our coveted plants. Luckily, this aptly-named water ninja didn’t get CAUGHT and FINED. 

            The end of the summer brought more than just water restrictions, it brought a new job for my husband. He was gone more and I was gearing up for the start of the new school year. Time got away from us as we became busier and busier. Unfortunately, we were not able to tend the garden like we wanted. Fast forward to October.  

As my husband and I start the process of harvesting our garden one last time before the first frost, I am filled with mixed emotions. I wonder if our tomatoes and peppers are salvageable. I notice not all the vegetables are rotten nor are the vines dead. In fact, it is surprising to me that the bad fruit is right next to the good. Life is a balance of ripe and rotten, like yin and yang.  Sometimes, it seems like it is ALL ROTTEN. We have plants that are brown, wilted and pitiful looking - certainly dead. But, they still have edible fruit! How could something that is seemingly dead still be productive? Ff I dig a little deeper, try a little harder, get past the dead leaves, I’ll find that perfectly shaped, sweet, vine-ripened tomato. 

 Our lives are like these plants.  One bad thing happens after another and it seems like there is no hope for fruit. But, even what seems dead and wilted can produce something worthwhile.  Even the compost of those dead plants will fertilize the soil for next year’s crop. Maybe, even some volunteer plants will appear when you least expect it! 

As we finish picking the last of our vegetables, I pass through the rows one last time and literally say “Goodbye” to the garden for one more season, realizing that this is all part of the life cycle. Things die at the end of their season.  The cold, winter weather must come and new growth goes dormant. Remember, though, next year in the spring, seedlings will thrust toward the heavens, brown will slowly turn to green, and new gardens will come alive again.