How does your garden grow?

  

If you have never gardened, you are completely missing out. I had no idea what an amazing experience growing one’s own food does for a soul. It’s almost magical. One day you plant a seed, and then next day you eat food from the plant. Well, not exactly the next day, but soon after.

 

This winter, since the world shut down and I could no longer go to the Outlets, I decided we all needed a project. Jack got to lay pavers to expand our patio, and did an amazing job, even if he did break a few bricks. Will got to finish our basement, literally, and everything that goes along with that. Not bad for a 15 year old kid. Faith focused on school and perfecting the French macaron. Billy focused on keeping his job in this crazy global upside-down world as well helping Will not die while using all kinds of saws and shooty nail things. Zoe and I decided our project would be to become gardeners since Billy shot down my original idea to start breeding exotic cats.

 

We had no idea we were going to be amazing gardeners. All credit goes to God, as it always should. He made the dirt, provided the water, and gave us the knowledge on how to make food come out of the ground and into our mouths. Zoe and I wanted something substantial to eat, and since you can’t grow gummy bears and Golden Oreos, we decided to focus on the potato. We chose two different kinds, tilled our soil, fertilized the ground, and planted the seed potatoes one cold March day. (#researchpaysoff)

 

We were so pumped to know we had an actual garden growing, and decided to expand our food options so we began to plant seeds for other foods like tomatoes and cilantro. When the first little green sprouts began to grow for all of the above, Zoe and I screamed. We talked to them. We watered them. We told them we couldn’t wait to eat them.

 

On Mother’s Day, we headed to Lowe’s and bought a few more plants to complete the garden. We watched and waited, checked it every morning, and before we knew it, we had an actual garden. Respectable even. The potato plants grew as tall as Zoe, and we watched for the tops to die so we would know when to harvest them. Our tomatoes took their sweet time, but finally decided to turn red. I like to think they blushed for us, since all we did was count them every day and tell them how wonderful they were. We began to have zucchini bigger than our cats, and jalapenos hotter than noon on the 4^th of July.

 

By mid summer, the potatoes were ready to be dug up. Zoe and I included our little 2 year old twin nephews, Ezra and Elias, who were visiting from Missouri. Now that I am an experienced gardener, I believe in teaching children how to live off the land while they are young. Every time the four of us dug up a sprout, we shouted like it was Christmas morning, “Another one! Another one!”. By the end of our harvest, we had hundreds of Yukon Golds, and Red potatoes. We laughed and laughed and were so excited to see the fruit of our labor in tangible results.

 

And just the other day, we were blown away by the first real live watermelon sitting there as if she couldn’t wait to be discovered. Zoe was the first to spot her, screamed appropriately, followed by my screams, less appropriate, but still loud. We could not believe our eyes. At least 4 of them, all taking over the area where we pulled out the potatoes. We can’t wait to taste the sweet goodness.

 

I’m reading a book by Beth Moore, called Chasing Vines, and in the first chapter she talks a lot about God being a gardener. She talks about how proud God was of His work, and how excited He is when his product produces fruit. I can relate on a much smaller scale, as I look over my garden, my household, my marriage, my kids, and see the fruit of abiding to the Vine. I can do the part about abiding, but I’ll admit I’m not as fond of being “pruned” as the Bible says in John 15. One thing I’ve learned is that God has to prune even the good branches in order for us to keep producing fruit. Simply put, even when you are headed in the right direction, you still need to rid yourself of the distractions that are keeping you from growing into the person God is calling you to be. Sometimes it’s really painful, but when you can focus your energy into what is blooming, the end result will be growth, fruit, and peace.

 

To sum up the lesson I have thus far learned in 2020: get a project, stay the course, abide in Christ.

 

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

 

John 15:4-5