How Does Your Garden Grow?

Brian and I used to be all into a huge garden full of produce that we didn't really know what to do with. Brian loves it when I make Corn and Cilantro Salsa, so for the years before the babies we had this massive garden that kind of sucked the life out of me. I would usually end up tending it until it steamrolled over me. At first I would keep up with it faithfully. I would weed, prune, stake, and wish sweet wishes over my gently growing babies.

I would labor and invest my time and my money, and I would get some good plants. But then the stupid Japanese beetles straight from the Lake of Fire would come descend on my plants, so I'd spend more money to spray the fire out of them (we're definitely not organic), and watch my baby plants grow.

Then all of the sudden some emergency would happen or we'd go on vacation and my beautiful garden would be taken over by weeds, and I'd lose my mental capacity to keep up with it, so I'd let it go. Stupid sin-cursed world full of weeds. I'd start visiting it less and less, trying to pretend that I could keep it beautiful in my mind if I just didn't face reality. Then I'd go out there and stare at my beautiful useless brussel sprouts still on the bush, all covered with little stinky bugs. Then winter would come and the brussel sprouts froze to the stalk. They're super healthy that way!

Then the babies came and the garden was the last thing on my mind. In between the babies I thought about restarting the garden, but I couldn't quite handle it. Then last year I thought about it, but I spent the summer laboring over some pretty difficult stuff. Then this year I thought "This is the year. I'm ready to tackle it again." Then I started organizing it, and planning it in my mind, and eventually our garden went from a huge, yard dominating deal with a life of it's own to the cute little deal we've got going on now.



So now every day, I scurry out to admire our little piece of paradise. I don't even change out of my fancy work clothes. I tell Hailey to go grab a bowl, so I can pick the produce. Then I yell to the swing set across the yard where the babies are playing that they are going to die when they come see how big stuff has grown overnight. Then we sit there and exult over the tiny little tomatoes that are suddenly appearing on the the most massive healthy vines I have ever grown. And Shelby runs to the strawberry patch and screams "I found one" and she picks it nice and green and throws it down the hatch. And we all sit there and wonder what it's going to be like to have a garden in our back yard in heaven and what it will be like to have Jesus over for tea on our front porch.

And we sit back and speak kind words of love to the baby peas that are growing so sweetly on the vines and the purple "banana" that Shelby can't believe is growing on our amazing little plant. I swear it seriously grew two inches overnight.

And we kick the stupid dog for running into the cucumbers and breaking a sweet little baby off the vine and wish the rest of them extra vigor to stand against the wiles of the gangly beast.

So our huge garden has shrunken considerably, along with the adulation we'd receive from every person who'd drive by our house admiring it. Now it's in the back, tiny and hidden. Tiny but magnificent. Loved by us and held in fascination by children who've never grown anything before. But it's so much sweeter, enjoying it with little kids who get as excited about every new baby vegetable that suddenly appears out of thin air as they did about the Christmas presents they got last year. It's like little gifts from God growing on our vines, making us long for home in heaven.