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Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

gardening

How this garden is growing me

June 1, 2015

On a hot and humid day, the sky took on a dark blue hue as clouds carried a storm our way. Thunder rumbled as I rushed the kids into the car from our quick errand. I’d hoped we could get home before the downpour started. A cool breeze escorted us home and we ran inside just before the drops started falling.

I’m not the kind of person who gets giddy about thunderstorms. Rain dampens my spirits in the same way it dampens the ground, and my senses go on high alert with thunder and lightning as I worry about tornadoes and storm damage.

But we’re experiencing a dry spell and our fledgling garden is in serious need of a soaking rain. So I welcomed the storm, praying that it would last long enough to revive our plants and save us a day of watering.

Five minutes later, the rain had passed, and my disappointment was palpable.

We haven’t had a garden for long, but this is one way I’m growing right along with it.

—

Since we moved into a house with overgrown and untended landscaping, my husband has been brushing up on his pruning skills. Every now and then, he’ll head outside to trim a limb here or there on the trees in the yard. Last year, he attempted to tame the rose bushes which have taken on an interesting shape from their neglect. He snipped and trimmed and I cringed at every cut. What if we ruin them?

The good news is: we didn’t ruin them.

wpid-20150526_120032.jpg

Last year, this yellow rose bush had two, maybe three, buds that bloomed. This year, we have a whopping seven on it!

Pruning, it seems, has a purpose and though the wait is long, the results are worth it.

I am one who does not embrace the pruning seasons of my life. The idea that I need to cut back or cut off anything is distasteful to me. I love and enjoy a lot of things and it’s hard to say “no” or “not now.” But when I try to do it all, I’m like the rose bush before it was pruned–so stretched out that I don’t have the energy to bloom. Cutting back allows me to focus my energy and produce more of the good and beautiful.

This, too, is how the garden is growing me.

—

These roses, they’re teaching me.

Like a cliche, I stop and smell them just because. The pink bush is more plentiful so I’ve been cutting off a few here and there and bringing them inside. The smell is almost intoxicating as it drifts through the house. I’ve never been a fan of the manufactured rose smell in perfumes, but there is nothing to compare to the scent of fresh roses throughout the house.

They are thorny and so must be handled with care, not unlike myself with my prickly edges and ability to wound. They are delicate. A strong breeze knocked all the petals off the half dozen or so we had in a vase on the dining room table and now the table and floor look like a flower girl has been through practicing for her big day. They don’t last as long once I bring them inside, preferring the wild outdoors to the confines of a vase. (I think I can relate to this.)

And they don’t all bloom at the same time.wpid-20150526_120056.jpg

These two in particular caught my eye the other day. I wondered if the one in the foreground was bothered by the one in the background that had already opened into fullness. I wanted to reassure it.

“It’s not your time yet, beautiful.”

Sometimes I need the same reminder.

When it looks like everyone around me is in full bloom and I’m still a closed bud, I need the assurance that it’s just not my time yet. Heck, four of these buds didn’t even exist last year.

Maybe that’s a better metaphor for me. Maybe I’m a not-yet-bud in need of more pruning.

—

Almost daily since we planted the garden, I walk out to the pot on the porch and pinch off a couple of leaves of basil or rosemary. I am somewhat addicted to the use of fresh herbs and the convenience of having them within walking distance.

wpid-20150511_164938.jpgMy recipe and Pinterest searches have revolved around these two ingredients, and I’ve tried numerous new recipes including fresh basil and fresh rosemary just because I can. I even created my own tuna salad recipe using the basil and I’ve eaten it more days in a row than I’d care to admit because it’s just that good.

I’ve long believed in theory that local, fresh ingredients were better and possible, but until we planted the garden, they seemed just a good idea and not practical. Now I’m wondering how much fresh and local stuff I can buy and use this summer, spending less money on substandard food at the grocery store and more money at local farm stands. (I’m still skeptical about whether our garden is actually going to produce, oh me of little faith.)

I’m even daring to try making a jam from the berries that grow on our dogwood tree in the front yard because why not? Living off the land is not in my DNA. Or maybe it is and I just have to nurture it.

—

I tell people all the time about my horrific gardening skills and they laugh, saying, surely it’s not that bad. But until this summer, the only thing I’ve kept alive multiple years (not including children) is a cactus. A freaking cactus that doesn’t really care if you forget to water it. Do you see what I’m working with here?

But I’m giving it a shot. We’re watering and paying attention. I’ve been on my hands and knees in the dirt planting flower seeds and teaching the kids about waiting. I’ve dug out a flower bed and now that we have a small plot that we’ve tended, I want to keep going. To keep pulling out the weeds and turning over the soil and planting beauty where only chaos has reigned.

I’m watching the skies, praying for rain, sticking my hands in the dirt (it’s there underneath my fingernails), watering plants and working up a sweat when I could be doing anything else. And where I’ve feared failure I’m learning to let go because the fate of these plants is not all up to me. I have a part to play, yes, but there is a bigger force at work in making them grow and thrive.

I could say the same thing about me, too.

We’re growing a garden, yes, but this garden is growing me. And if we never eat a single tomato or pepper or cucumber, we will have done well.

Filed Under: beauty, Friendship, gardening, Summer Tagged With: first time gardeners, flowers, fresh herbs, gardening, local food, praying for rain, pruning

The day we planted a garden

May 26, 2015

A few weeks ago, we planted a garden, our first as a married couple and long overdue. My husband’s gardening genes run deep, and when I first met him, he was working for a nursery (of the landscaping kind, not the children kind). Our previous homes have been apartments or rentals plus who had the time when the kids were still babies and toddlers and he was in seminary?

A garden seemed like too much, a far-off dream. Someday.

But the home we have now, also a rental, has space for such dreams, more if we wanted it, but we decided to start small. My parents and grandparents gave me birthday money to buy plants, so on the first available day, before we missed the planting window, we headed across the street to the home improvement store’s garden center and bought the tools we needed and the plants we wanted.

All dreams start with an investment of money and time, and my husband spent the better part of what was left of the day clearing out the mess that our house’s landscaping had become. To say it had been neglected would be putting it politely. We have lived here two years and our occasional pruning and raking has been a start but not nearly enough. wpid-20150511_142731.jpg

He pulled up the black lanscaping paper that had been buried and torn and was far from pretty. He broke up the rocky soil and the clay, turning it over and over until the black dirt appeared. He added some soil we’d purchased. He stirred and softened and patted it down until the area was almost unrecognizable under his tending.

We plotted the position of our plants and as a family took turns watering and digging and placing the plants in their spots.

wpid-20150511_164800.jpg

Three tomato plants.

Four pepper plants.

A cucumber plant.

Basil and rosemary in a pot on the porch.

Not much, but it’s a start, and whatever the dream we all have to start somewhere.

—

Eight years ago today, Phil and I planted a garden, we just didn’t know it at the time. 

Photo by Dan Royer

Photo by Dan Royer

We called it the start of a marriage but the analogy is not lost on me that a marriage needs tending as much as a garden.

—

As he cleared out the weedy overgrown mess, my husband discovered some buried and unproductive bulbs. Tulips, possibly. We saw two bloom this year that we didn’t see last year, so maybe they just need some love.

I found new homes for them, and even though I haven’t a clue if I’m doing them any good, I dug holes and buried them again. Perhaps we will see some blooms next spring?

The kids have acquired some flower seeds from various sources, so we prepared some beds and poked holes in the dirt, dropped in a few seeds, covered them over and watered them.

The next morning they wondered if we’d see any sign of growth yet and I told them it would be weeks for the flowers, months yet until the plants produce food we can eat.

Gardening is planting a promise, an invitation to wait for a good thing to come.

Holy ground, this dirt.

—

Marriage, too, is the planting of a promise. On the day we say “I do,” what we mean, even if we don’t know it, is that we’re planning to wait around for the good stuff to come.

If a garden starts with the gift of money, the shopping at the garden center, then a marriage starts with a wedding celebration, an infusion of love and joy for the thing we’re about to do.

But we don’t know, at least I didn’t, that after the high of the wedding day comes the hard work. The clearing out of the weedy overgrowth of selfishness and individualism that runs wild in our hearts when left to ourselves. There’s a careful tending of this new living thing, a marriage. At times it is like a seed buried beneath the dirt, dark and dormant yet somehow alive, vulnerable to wind and flooding rains and birds looking for a treat.

Other times it is like a plant transferred from the greenhouse to the ground, leaving an environment of relative safety for one with unknown challenges, an uncertain future.

Part of what has kept me from gardening in the past is the fear that we’ll fail at it. That we’ll have wasted our money and killed a plant that was meant to be life and give food. Fear keeps me from trying something at which I may not succeed.

I entered marriage thinking that success was the only outcome and I wouldn’t have to work at it. I didn’t know that we were leaving the greenhouse to be exposed to the elements of nature, vulnerable to pests and disease.

Planting a garden has made me feel like the mother of a newborn again. Did they survive the night?, I thought on that first morning, with my babes and with our plants.

With marriage, it’s been a bit trickier to measure “success.” We survived the first night, the first week, the first year, but surviving is not the same as thriving.

Eight years we have been in care of this garden, our marriage, and only in the most recent years have we really put in the work it takes to make it grow. We have each dug up tangled roots that have choked the life out of us, and we are more aware of the constant need to weed them from our lives. We take more care to water the garden and bring it into the life-giving light.

And we acknowledge that there are dangers, no matter how friendly they might appear. (Bunnies are cute but their tendency to nibble on the greens is problematic.)

This work, in the garden, is not easy and sometimes there are a dozen things we’d rather be doing. Our muscles ache, and our skin bears the burns, but, oh the joy we’ll have when we’re able to bite into that first juicy tomato later in the summer.

This work, in our marriage, is not easy and sometimes there are a dozen things we’d rather be doing. Our hearts ache and we bear the scars where we’ve scorched each other with anger and bitterness and selfishness.

But oh the joy when we can taste the fruit of our labors. When we get a tiny glimpse of the growth that is happening. When we can see how the work has been worth it.

At the end of the summer, we will know how we fared, but next year, we will have to work the garden again. There is no easy path if we want to grow our own food.

With each year that passes, we can see how our marriage fares, but daily and weekly and yearly we have to work it. Again and again. Tearing out weeds, watering, protecting, nurturing. There is no easy path if we want our marriage to flourish.

—

We planted a garden.

We didn’t much know what we were doing.

We have made mistakes.

We have let the weeds overtake us.

We almost gave up on the garden ever producing fruit.

But we are finally, finally, taking small steps toward making this garden grow.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: anniversary, flowers, gardening, marriage, planting seeds

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Hi. I’m Lisa, and I’m glad you’re here. If we were meeting in real life, I’d offer you something to eat or drink while we sat on the porch letting the conversation wander as it does. That’s a little bit what this space is like. We talk about books and family and travel and food and running, whatever I might encounter in world. I’m looking for the beauty in the midst of it all, even the tough stuff. (You’ll find a lot of that here, too.) Thanks for stopping by. Stay as long as you like.

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