When I was in elementary school — probably third or fourth grade, I took home a letter from our school principal. NO, I wasn’t being suspended — It was a letter about a brand new idea for the students and parents of the school. The new idea was a summer gardening project. For the very first time, the Akron Public School system was encouraging students to plant a garden at their home and tend it during the summer months. Someone from the school district would visit once a week to check on the progress of the garden and to offer help as needed. At the end of the summer, each student gardener would receive a certificate of completion of the project.
Now please understand that I lived in the city right next to an expressway ramp in the middle of Akron, Ohio. We didn’t have big yards. We didn’t have a lot of land on which to grow gardens. Most of us who attended that school had never seen a farm or a garden. We had never done anything with the dirt in our yards, except to play in it. We were city kids, and gardening was a brand new idea.
And it was an idea that my father loved. He jumped onboard, and soon my brother and I were planting tomatoes, corn and cucumbers, along with some flowers. That summer, I learned a lot about the dirt, and about growing things, and about weeds and about hard work.
The only real reference point I had for gardens at that time in my life, was what I had heard about the Garden of Eden in Sunday School. The Garden of Eden is part of the story of creation, which is found in the second chapter of the book of Genesis, and it goes like this:
“So God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground, and breathed into it the breath of life. And man became a living person. Then God planted a garden in Eden, to the east, and placed in the garden the man. God planted all sorts of beautiful trees there in the garden, trees producing the choicest of fruit. God placed the man in the Garden of Eden as its gardener, to cultivate and care for the land.” — Genesis 2
So now, my brother and I would become gardeners, and we would be responsible for cultivating and caring for the land.
That summer, we managed to grow several tomatoes, and even some yellow squash. It became a time for my dad and I to spend some time together besides the times when we would go fishing, or I would hang out in the garage while he worked on the car. After a few weeks, my brother was never around when it was time to “go check on the garden” — which ended up being time to pull weeds. The best part of that garden was watching my dad walk over to one of the tomato plants, pluck a juicy, ripe tomato from the plant, rub off the dirt on his pants, and then eat it. I was awed by the fact that we had grown that tomato from a tiny plant, and it had produced real food that we could eat.
The second summer of the garden project of the Akron City Schools, a competition element was added. In September, right after school started, the school held a fall festival, and we were invited to bring in our best garden product. Of course, my brother had no entry, because he had no interest, but my dad drove me to school that morning, so I could take our precious entry in and place it in the garden area for judging. That evening, my dad and I were delighted to receive a blue ribbon for our beautiful tomato, which somehow ended up being one of the biggest tomatoes on the table. I always wondered if my dad was sneaking out late at night putting some kind of extra fertilizer or something on our tomato plants.
What I learned from those summers in the garden have lasted all of my life. I learned how long it takes for something to grow. I learned that nothing grows up over night — except weeds. You can’t force a seed to grow faster than nature intended it to, and you can’t make trees bear fruit on demand. All we can do is create the best possible conditions in our garden, plant the right seeds and give those seeds the care and attention they need. Then we have to trust that nature will take care of the rest.
In the children’s book entitled, Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel, Frog had a garden that Toad admired. Toad wanted a garden too. But Frog told him, “It is very nice, but it was hard work.” And then Frog gave Toad some flower seeds. Toad quickly ran home and planted them.
“Now seeds,” said Toad, “start growing.” Toad tried very hard to make his garden grow. He shouted at the seeds, read them long stories and sang songs to them — but they did not grow.
“What shall I do?” Asked Toad. “Leave them alone,” said Frog. “Let the sun shine on them, let the rain fall on them. Soon your seeds will start to grow.” Then one day, little green plants appeared.
“At last,” shouted Toad. “My seeds have stopped being afraid to grow! But you were right Frog. It was very hard work.”
The same patience and trust in the process is required in our lives. We have to wait for our business to grow, for our relationships to mature, for our goals to become reality. So much in life requires us to wait — to wait for healing, to wait for nature to take its course.
I also found out that we had to do some pruning of the plants and flowers too. A few weeks ago I read this FB post from a flower farmer who described her first experience with pruning this way:
“The first year I was growing cut flowers, someone told me I needed to “pinch back” my cut flowers in mid to late June….right as they were starting to bloom. I was in disbelief. I had been waiting for WEEKS for my plants to bloom and now I was supposed to cut them all back to just a few inches tall?
I was scared to do it. I was afraid I would ruin everything. But I decided to trust the wisdom of this person who had gone ahead of me, and had come out on the other side. So I did it.
I got on my hands and knees and cut back those precious seedlings…it was awful. I looked at my field of 3-inch-tall seedlings and was overwhelmed with panic. And this is when I learned one of the most important lessons in my entire life: GROWTH REQUIRES PRUNING.
Do you know how to increase growth, fruitfulness and productivity? You cut back. Ruthlessly. Methodically. It makes no sense. But it’s the truth. I have taken this lesson and applied it to all areas of my life — cutting back ruthlessly and methodically.”
Now let’s talk about weeds for a minute. Man — those are some hearty things, aren’t they? If only we all had the resilience that weeds have. They keep going no matter what we do to them. I like to think about weeds as a metaphor for the distractions of our lives. The things that keep the pretty stuff from happening. The time-wasting that we do, that keeps us from completing the tasks we need to finish. Weeds take over our gardens and flower beds because we don’t continuously monitor what is going on. When we ignore what we have planted, the weeds move in and all of our hard work gets covered up with weeds. Our beds and gardens no longer look beautiful. We have allowed the weeds to crowd out what is beautiful.
Just as our gardens need constant tending, so do our goals and dreams. We need to take all of the action necessary to achieve our goals and complete our projects on a continuous basis. It’s the only way our goals will bear fruit. Perhaps the weeds in our lives are negative people who have covered up what was once beautiful for us.
And another lesson I learned from gardening is the soil itself. A good gardener tends the soil and makes sure it will nourish the plants and crops. When the soil is right, things have a much better chance of growing. The same is true for people. When we are in the right place, the right relationship, the right job, the right calling, with the right people, we thrive. Sometimes we need to change the soil we are in — leave a job, move to a new home, get a new dream. Sometimes we need to start hanging with different people so we can grow.
Working in a garden teaches us patience and tenacity. It strengthens our ability to have faith in something outside of ourselves. It allows us to see the fruit of our labor, and to trust nature. It teaches us to choose the seeds that we plant very carefully. Amen.
English poet, Alfred Austin, has written a beautiful description of gardening: “The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” — Alfred Austin
May we all take time this week to reflect on our level of patience, on our tenacity and our ability to have faith in something greater than ourselves. Amen
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