The Secrets of the Garden

A good friend and I set out to change our lifestyle by eating real food. Clean food. Food that was not processed and wasn’t presented in a bag, a can, a carton or a plastic take out tray from the nearest Costco. No offense Costo. I love you. And all those prepared foods you have can come in really handy when you are planning a huge event and you already are overwhelmed with preparations. But on a daily basis, we wanted to eat real food. Food that acted as medicine in our bodies and food that healed. Food that didn’t contribute to chronic inflammation. Food that wasn’t poisoning us. This is no easy task when we are bombarded by marketing ploys of convenience and flavor and economics and are brainwashed into thinking that our lives will be so much more fun and our relationships so much richer if we eat Fat Burgers together as a family. So we bit the unprocessed bullet.

By spring we had the offer of a friend of a friend’s private garden plot in the backyard of her new home. She was going to be travelling most of the summer and the plot would go fallow. We jumped at the chance to try our hand at growing things. We’d kept babies alive, surely we could keep a few vegetables alive. Of course first we had to get them alive. The garden plot came complete with a sprinkling system so we didn’t have to drive out to the garden every day. Other than gas and time going to the garden was not going to be a hardship as the yard overlooked the lush valley with the river and the view stretched beyond the tree line and settled on the majestic Rocky mountains. We thought we were gardening in the Napa Valley. We toyed with the idea of growing grapes for wine but knew full well that we were not in the proper growing zone. A compromise would just be buying wine, setting up lawn chairs and watching the sun go down from the vantage point of our secret garden.

The owner of the plot gave us the list of what she had planted last year and what had done well and what had not. It only made sense to follow her lead. We bought seed packets for green beans, purple beans, peas, white bulb onions, green onions and radishes. We bought spinach, kale, butter lettuce and romaine lettuce. Beets, carrots, and zucchini. We even bought some tomato plants that were called “French fries and Ketchup” because the top of the plant grew tomatoes and the roots were potatoes. We finished it off with cucumber and bell pepper plants. We bought heirloom carrots in 3 different colors and while we were at it, thought we’d try gold beets and candy cane beets. It was a huge plot so we had more than enough soil to till and planting to do. We brought in the big guns. Our husbands.

Our first Saturday afternoon in the garden was an eye opener. It was cotton plantation hot and the men were turning over the soil with their bare hands and a trowel or a hoe. Earthworms were abundant. We knew this was a good sign. Over half our seeds were already premeasured on strips for planting. This helped immensely. We pounded in stakes so we could run string for the beans, peas and sweat peas to climb on. We pounded in more stakes at the end of every row and fastened our empty colorful seed packets to them so we would know what we planted and where while we were waiting for it to grow. AND we left enough space between each row of seeds for replanting later in the season to ensure a continuous harvest. We planted carrots next to tomatoes as this is supposed to spur each on to better growth. Outfitted with rubber boots and gardening gloves, we had sweat dripping from our brows in no time. After an afternoon of back breaking work that we weren’t used to we retreated to Starbucks for refreshments where we bragged about the success of our project. A little like counting your carrots before they’re sprouted. The hard work was done and now all we had to do what wait.

The urge to drive back to visit the garden in a couple of days was great but we restrained ourselves. Obviously nothing would have surfaced yet. The waiting began. Who of us likes to wait? We want everything right now but a garden is not an instant gratification kind of thing. As I think about waiting, I think about all the results and answers I am currently waiting for in my life. With the garden, if I’ve done my part – planted the seed and continue to water those seeds – provide nourishment and am willing to take on the upkeep -the weeding and working the soil, something will eventually grow. I have no control over the speed and abundance of the harvest. I just wait and trust the process. It’s the same with my life. If I trust God for the answers and solutions and I’ve done everything that He requires me to do then He will do His part and come through for me. Faith involves waiting. Faith IS waiting. Waiting with hope. If my friend and I had said ‘we want a garden’ and then just sat in front of a pile of dirt all summer doing nothing but staring at it we would be sadly disappointed. That would be hopeless waiting. I guess if we liked weeds we might have been excited.

Since our garden was being watered every morning by the built in sprinkler system we waited a week to go peek. There was nothing but our perfectly organized stakes, strings and empty seed packet signs. But when I returned the following weekend there were rows of the tiniest green sprouts. I was so excited I took gobs of photos and posted them on social media. I’m sure others were wondering why I was getting so excited over dirt. We went back in another 10 days or so and it was obvious we had a garden on our hands. We even had to do a little weeding. More pictures were taken.

Then it started to rain. Noah’s ark kind of rain. It rained for several weeks with no let up. It was so rainy we could not even visit the garden. It was monsooning. We certainly couldn’t work in all that mud. Finally, after about 3 weeks we dared to discover the damage. Many vegetables had florished while others were drowned. The concept that if a little water is good then a lot of water is better didn’t really play out here. Too much of a good thing. How often have I bought into that myth in my life? If a little is good then a whole bunch will be better? A myth that reverberates every 6 months or so as I purge my house yet again and continue to have too much… stuff.

Of course this overabundance of water from above fell on the weeds as well and now we were having difficulty distinguishing between the weeds and the plants. The men didn’t seem to easily recognize lettuce and were pulling it out along with the weeds. That reminded me of a young cashier at the grocery store when I came through with zucchini and cilantro. He asked me if this was a cucumber? And what was this green stuff called? So we had to educate them on the different leaves plus we pointed out that the lettuce was growing in fairly straight rows so let that be their guide. Although I’m pretty sure we ate a few salads that were mostly dandelion greens.

This caused me to wonder if people could tell the difference between me and everyone else. As a Christ follower did I just blend in with the rest of the world? Or do people notice a distinguishable difference? Because they should. If I end up in a salad of dandelion greens I’m doing something wrong.

We planted the garden in May, the weekend before Victoria Day. By the end of June we were officially labeled ourselves farmers,taking home harvests of romaine, spinach, butter lettuce, onions, radish. So colorful and fresh and no pesticides I might add? Doesn’t this make them organic? Or does there have to be a lot of compost in the soil? Kind of reminds me of the movie The Martian, stuck on Mars for 7 years with nothing to eat but potatoes grown in his own… well you get the picture.

We continued to visit our garden all through July… still raining. Why hadn’t God asked us to start building a big boat yet? The beans and snap peas were growing on the vines but some varmint was feasting on them and the pods were full of holes so we finally just cut our losses on the lentils. I replanted some spinach and added kale. We unearthed some carrots and beets but the actual vegetables were very small compared to their foliage. Very showy with not much substance. As I contemplated this discovery I started to wonder about my own character. Sometimes I can tend to be like that. We’ve all met people that make an amazing first impression but when you dig deeper there’s not much there. I’d rather be the kind of person that surprises you when you look deeper than the coif, the face paint, the trendy fashion. I’d like you to find a mature, seasoned, colorful, fully grown healthy person of substance.

A strange thing happened next. That rich, moist, soil, patronized by the earthworms and nourished by the monsoon rains turned rock hard. In August I went over to do a little harvesting as the carrots were growing on top of one another. As I tried to pull the carrots from the ground the greens kept breaking off and the carrots remained buried in clay. So I put on my gloves and with a hand spade grasped tightly I began digging those carrots out. By the time I was done and removed my gloves my blistered palms were bleeding and raw. Our rich soil from May had turned to clay by August. This can happen to us sometimes. We start out pleasant, pliable and promising and after we have dealt with the unwelcome storms and the driving rain we harden our hearts to the possibility of reaping anything worthwhile. We become so hard that we have to be broken in order for the rich harvest to emerge. I don’t want the storms to make me hard. But if they do, then I want God to put on His gardening gloves and pursue me with a vengeance.

By the end of August our sweet peas started to grow before our very eyes almost. They were crawling up the ropes like professional rock climbers. Nostalgic and nimble with their fushia, pink, white and purple velvet petals and heavenly scent. Mostly I was just so darn proud of them for not giving up even though their growth was slow. The brave and tenacious sweet peas that graced our kitchens and offices until the end of September.

By now we were harvesting zucchini, cherry tomatoes, small beets and carrots. We just kept pulling the carrots from the ground and they seemed to be multiplying. I think the owner had planted some extra rows of carrots in the garden for us. They were amazingly sweet, we were eating them right out of the ground, a little dirt never killed us (well we did run them under the hose so it was clean dirt). Unfortunately the bell peppers and cucumbers had been destroyed. They started out as plants … did I mention the hail? I was starting to understand the delicate dance of the farmer. The excitement of new life, the anticipation (and necessity) of growth, the pride of harvest and the grieving for what’s been lost.

All in all, the garden was a success. A chance to risk. A lesson in patience, waiting and hope. An opportunity to reap most of what we sowed. A season to reflect. An experience to understand growth and a time to be grateful for the harvest. A schooling in hope and a testing in faith. These are the secrets of the garden.