Our friend Mrs. Mathel Ambrose has one of the most beautiful gardens around, and since she couldn't tend to it all anymore, she lets us use part of it up there in White River. I planted some garden up there, afraid the goats would accidentally get into ours here.
But actually ours has stayed safe so far, and here it was a few weeks ago.
Mathel's garden is peaceful and quiet, visited by robins, even if it is right beside Highway 83. Occasionally truck drivers will beep their horns as they see Grandma Mathel and us out tending the garden.
She shares rhubarb with me which I turn into a dessert for Sunday potluck after church.
Hannah was doing such a good job with our own garden, and I helped as I could. I did the mulching after this picture happened. Mathel tells me that when she is complimented for her amazing garden and how much work she must do in it, she says, "I don't work hard; I work smart."
(Top secret: She works hard, too! Beautiful gardens are hard work, no matter how you split it.)
A friend brings grass clippings and leaves that she mulches her entire garden with each year, feeding nutrients to the roots of her plants, protecting the ground from the hot sun, and keeping moisture underneath the layer of mulch. Hannah and I did nearly all the mulching for her this year since she'd had recent surgery and a back injury. Then Mathel shared the leftover mulch and let us take many huge trash bags full of it home to our own garden.
Until the last few days!
All of a sudden, the robins seemed to discover that another garden existed down the hill.
So while the dad and son in the family work at various construction projects such as pouring the foundation for this job out near Winner last week, I cook, do the laundry, gather eggs, make goat cheese, write and edit stories, work on VBS plans, garden--and pick lettuces, chard, and radishes from our own garden!
We could have gone to a camp meeting an hour away and indeed considered and hoped to go. But with it being open to the elements with no air conditioning at 107 degrees the days we thought to go, I just couldn't manage that.
I felt more than once, that while others met God in camp meetings, I met God in my garden.
There was a peace there that was different than the wars and the pressures of the world.
"Stop reading the news," I read yesterday. "God did not mean for you to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders."
I really think that God intended for His people to grow gardens--or at least to tend the one He planted to start with.
Now, thanks to sin's curse, we must plant and weed and tend and sweat--moms as well as dads, girls as well as boys.
But to dispense with gardens just so we can spend summer attending various camps--I don't think it's healthy. Gardens do "tie a person down," but that builds character as we learn responsibility and actually grow what we eat instead of expecting cooks to feed us palate-pleasing food while we sit and fan ourselves at camp after camp. We need garden work in the dirt and greens, out with the robins and sparrows and marigolds. Children need to learn to eat garden lettuce, radishes, and chard instead of turning up their noses and expecting mom and dad to provide pizza, potato chips, and ice cream.
Gardening is truly spiritual and not just secular work, just as spiritual as early morning prayer meeting at church.
I suggest more of us meet God in the morning in a garden rather than in a man-made building, and see what God might say to us through a peaceful, cheerful, and hard-working robin
and from the glowing flowers and blossoming peas.
Our children need to know from experience where onions and lettuce and carrots come from--not just the store shelves. Gardens are not popular around here, and milk goats are a novelty. The government provides a check every month with which to go to the store and purchase potato chips, pasta, and candy. Over and over this family or that one is coming to watch us milk our goats. They look at our garden and we share our garden lettuce and chard on Sunday. Suddenly children are learning where milk comes from, not just from cows, and that eggs (at least healthy, homey ones) are laid by chickens in a nest box--or in a nest in the straw on the floor!
"Do chickens lay eggs every day?" asks a father who must be at least 40 or 50 years old. He does not know, so we tell him. Yes, depending on the season and feed, they typically lay at least one egg a day--until molting season or they grow older.
Jesus came to a barn.
And Adam was given a garden.
We can meet God there, too!
No comments:
Post a Comment