July 19, 2007

• "I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God, it would be in a garden at the cool of the day. " -F. Frankfort Moore
  
  Doyle
  and I are still getting the biggest kick out of our beginner's garden,
  the miniature truck farm we've cultivated just behind our carport on
  Hickory Street.
  We must have picked the best summer in history to
  make our late debut as vegetable gardeners. With this season's
  abundance of warm showers, our tomato vines are growing like kudzu in
  south Alabama, and the zucchini, cucumbers and bell peppers are going
  to town. Just in the last couple of weeks, our half-dozen okra plants
  have started to bear, and the potatoes are already dug.
  Digging
  potatoes reminded me of digging for clams on a Rhode Island beach in
  1972, except that the potatoes don't frantically burrow deeper when
  they sense the threatening shovel getting too close. It's fun, sort of
  like searching for buried treasure.
  We've had lots of fresh, organic
  produce on our plates, and it might just be our imaginations, but we
  seem to be feeling more energetic. For my lunch today, I had a bowlful
  of tomatoes, zucchini, green peppers and onions that I zapped in the
  microwave until the veggies were soft enough to suit me. After adding a
  little salt, red pepper flakes and grated Parmesan cheese, I had a
  feast. It makes me feel healthy and virtuous to eat a bowl full of
  colorful food right out of our own garden.
  In the evening after supper, I like to go out in the garden and see what little gifts are waiting for me.
   Picking
  tomatoes is my favorite garden chore. Like everybody else's, I'm sure,
  our vines are so lush that you have to push branches aside to see if
  there are any red globes hiding behind the green curtains. If I uncover
  a ripe one, I'm as tickled as a little girl who's just discovered a
  bright Easter egg hidden in the border grass.
  In fact, I have an old
  white wicker Easter basket that I've been using to collect my garden
  bounty. I feel like all I need to complete the timeless picture is a
  long skirt and a sunbonnet. The woman leans over, plucks her vegetables
  and places them in the basket she carries over her arm, taking them
  inside to feed her family......It makes me feel in tune with my
  great-grandmothers in Mississippi, Granny Holt and Mama Lou and
  Grandmother Aubert. I'm pretty sure they wore sunbonnets and carried
  baskets on their arms to their gardens on warm summer days.
  Not only do we have a vegetable garden, we also have its corollary, or maybe its inverse -- a compost heap.
  I've
  discovered that a compost pile is a very satisfying thing. Well, it's
  not just a thing. It's sort of a creature. It's organic. It's living
  and changing.
  Instead of dumping them into the trash can or the
  garbage disposal, we save up our potato peelings and vegetable scraps
  and eggshells and coffee grounds, toss them into the compost heap and
  cover all the mess over with grass clippings. And then the magic begins.
  The
  little potato bugs show up, and the worms and other creeping, crawling
  things, and the warm summer rains fall...and it all starts to change
  into something else.
  If I take a shovel and turn the bottom of the
  heap up, I can see it -- the dark, crumbly, rich DIRT that has somehow
  magically appeared.
  The compost is transformed by garden alchemy
  from something slimy and smelly and sticky and nasty into something
  else entirely, something fertile and healthy and enriching.
  I can't wait until it's time to spread the compost all over our little garden and work it in for next year's plants to feast on.
  A metaphor is just begging me to recognize it here.
  I
  think the true Master Gardener delights in taking the jagged shells of
  our broken dreams, the slimy residue of our mistakes, the smelly
  leftovers of our sin, the damp, moldy grounds left behind by our
  percolating rebellions, and gently piling it all up in a corner of His
  backyard.
  He adds the warm rain of His forgiveness and the healing
  sunshine of His love, and He carefully turns it, just exactly right,
  with the fork of His wisdom.
  And in the place of damp, repellent residue, with His graceful economy, wasting nothing, He leaves rich, fertile soil.
  Then He tills it into deeply into our lives, and plants His seeds.
  So there, out of our redeemed mistakes and failures, He grows His garden.
  It's not just my body that feels healthier after working in my little vegetable patch. I think it's good for my soul, too.
  
  By Celia DeWoody
  Published July 18, 2007
  Harrison Daily Times, Harrison, Ark.
  Copyright CPI, Inc. 2007
  
  
  
  
  

  • 7:59 pm
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