Lessons from the garden

To summarize everything that I am about to say, I love to garden.

I love the dirt, the air, the water, the sunshine, the greenness. 

I love the leap of "if I plant it, it will grow" and then secretly wondering if it really will. How could it? How could this tiny little rocklike seed in my palm possibly become more than it is? 

So you plant it. Somewhere dirty and sunny. Then you water it. Then you wait. Maybe water it a little more. 

Then you wait some more. Maybe do something productive. Maybe not. 

And then, almost without fail, it becomes more than it was. 

And you have visible evidence that things can change and literally grow larger and more beautiful than they were before. 

Like love, gardening requires sacrifice. Time, energy, money. 

 But as with sacrifice, it will give you back more than you gave away.

With patience, one little seed will become thousands of seeds. 

If you spend the time to weed out the bad, give it the good, and then let it do it's magic - it will give you back beauty. 

For many years I didn't put much value on growing flowers. You can't eat them, right? So why work for it? 

Oh how wrong I was. How little I valued the joy that beauty brings. You'd think an artist would realize that, but I was naive. 

I'm quite excited for the day when I will no longer be naive. Someday I won't be. 

Look at the way the vegetables swell in the sunshine. Sometimes I think I can almost see them growing as I sit there in the dirt with my little ones giggling and growing around me. 

Sometimes I think I can see them growing as I watch, too. 

And as it turns out, you can eat flowers. Well, critters can. 

 John Denver was singing words of truth when he sang about homegrown tomatoes.
All winter without them is a culinary bummer.

My favorite way to eat them is on wheat bread with provolone cheese.
I'm salivating.

 One little pepper seed. That's all it took to grow this whole plant full of peppers, which in turn are full of seeds.

Sometimes the thing that you are growing isn't visible until you harvest it. Until it's all the way done growing. 

Sometimes, when you don't see what has been growing until the end, you are amazed by what you didn't realize was down there. 

Sometimes the things you harvest are so tiny that it doesn't seem to amount to much at all. If you give up early, it really doesn't amount to much.
But, if like my husband and his raspberry loving Claire, you stay in those pokey bushes and keep on picking, you will end up with an overflowing bucket of berries exploding with sugar and juice and love.

Sometimes when a fruit looks ripe, it really isn't. That takes even more patience than waiting for the sprout in the spring.  

 Sometimes, after giving your little bit of love, you end up receiving so much love in return that it overflows and spills over to your neighbors and family and anyone else who happens by.

And sometimes you learn that to be truly fed, you need more than food.