The Creative Life: Gardening

Those crazy peas. Look at them winding around each other, clinging like they can hold each other up. I shake my head with an amused smile and guide their limbs so they can grab onto the trellis.

The squirrels--not so amusing (although I'm sure after I've covered my beds with cayenne pepper, they'll provide plenty of entertainment). More holes! And my poor seedlings. Another two bite the dust.

Today is Earth Day, as you may well know, and the perfect way to celebrate Earth Day is with gardening, a joy I've recently discovered. Gardening combines the fun of getting your hands dirty with the wonder of watching seeds become ripe tomatoes with the pleasure of beholding beauty you've helped cultivate.

In gardening, we work alongside God. We can't make our flowers grow (50 points for song and musical reference), but we work in joy as we create spaces for their beauty. I can't point to the tomato and claim that I made this, but I can claim to have grown it.

We taste the pleasure that Adam and Eve must have felt in their garden, and we foretaste the beauty of the new earth, lush with healing fruit. God never intended us to sit back and watch. We participate, and my hands submerged in a mix of soil, compost, and, yes, cow manure, I feel a bit of what God must have felt when he pronounced his creation good.

A new tradition: the past three years, my mom has come up for a week to help me with my garden (she knows I'm hopeless without her!). The first year, we started a small flower garden in the front yard. The second year, we added containers of tomatoes, peppers, and herbs (and one of artichoke, but since nothing came of that, I prefer not to mention it). This year, my husband built three raised beds, we ordered dirt from the city (did you know they deliver?), and my mom and I sprinkled in seeds of peas, squash, cucumbers, peppers, spinach, corn, green beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, carrots, lettuce, onions, and half a dozen herbs.

(Okay, so technically, a couple of the above were transplants, although most were seeds, and while my mom and I did quite a bit of it, not all of those could be planted in the week she was here. If you must know the truth.)

Daily, I visit my garden. What seedlings will I find? What new growth? You think me impatient (and, yes, I have impatiens). You think me naive to look for something new everyday. But it's there: a new daily joy. Ah, I love my garden. 

As an added bonus, a sneak peek into my raised bed vegetable garden:

Psst--If you find this post interesting and think others might so as well, would you mind taking a minute to stumble it? It would mean a lot to me.