It’s time to garden

I am in year two of a home garden. I plan on murdering many, but hopefully less, plants this year.

Last year, we spent all the money I didn’t have. We had just purchased our (FIRST!) home in January, and all winter long I (and my good friend ChatGPT) envisioned a flourishing, enormous garden. I had high vision of feeding our little family on a suburban micro homestead - canning through the fall to keep our bounty in motion for most of the year. My eyes danced with a giant you-pick garden, bringing the pollinators in to enchant my little girls with 100s of butterflies.

There would be fairy houses!

Arch ways with shady cucumber vines!

Pumpkins for carving!

Fruit trees!

There would even be a TINY garden outside of my girls’ new playhouse (compliments of Papi, who builds the best things).

Did I consult a single wise real-life gardener before starting my garden? No.

We bought dirt. So much dirt. Fertilizer. The other random thing that you mix with the dirt and fertilizer. Built the beds. Lined the beds. Nursed over 100 seeds indoors in the early Spring. This was going to be our year!

I didn’t know about the Tomato Hornworms.

My dear friend (and avid gardener) eventually came over early in the season and gently chuckled at my layout. Carrots in the spring? Those won’t produce. One small box for peas, beans, cucumbers, and some random flowers? Everything will get choked out. She ominously foretold my first year garden would likely flop, but I would learn along the way and to please consult her next time!

Well, our pitiful little garden produced about 2 cucumbers, accidental sunflowers (that fell from the bird feeder), and a pumpkin vine that had about 4 days of mighty flourishing before it got choked out. The hornworms had the absolute time of their life and I’m not sure a single tomato was saved.

Ironically, the only thing that did produce lasting fruit was my little girls’ tiny garden, because their single seeds had room to grow. There’s a sermon in there I haven’t unpacked yet.

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I am hopefully coaching a middle school soccer team, and there is a neighboring Christian school next to ours. I want to ask if we can borrow their field, but the idea of doing so has created a general sigh. Us vs them? Christians…don’t share?

What if the Christians in a given community were more like a mixed ecology? A planned, cultivated, flourishing garden? Where the established gardeners (historic churches) grow tough to produce, nutrient-dense, fruit on archways and crawling vines. The wild ones (entrepreneurial Christian expressions) plant a beautiful and chaotic pollinator garden, attacting much-needed eco diversity to the neighborhood. There will need to be pruning, wisdom, risktaking, innovation, and deep collaboration - it’s hard work to produce a beautiful garden.

But when you rest in morning light, sipping on freshly brewed coffee and a worn bible in hand ready to be read, in a huge, beautiful, cultivated, intentional garden where birds are singing and butterflies are dancing - there’s little to no glory on earth that can touch that experience.

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Maybe I should ask my neighbors - who go to a different church - to start a morning walking group on out street :)