Back to the garden

The other night after dinner errands, I spent a good hour-plus at our community garden plot north of campus. I had been unprepared to do any work--Shakespeare Camp had seen me take out garden-shoes and tools from the back of the car and I haven't put them back in there yet. So I got on the dirt barefoot, and used my hands plus a couple of sticks to do some much needed weeding.

Aaah... I pulled the weeds and fluffed up the soil around the plants and realized how much I had been missing it. Being out there, hands on dirt, enjoying the silence of gardening. The silence of the interaction between hands and my thoughts & imagination as my hands work.

There are so many life analogies to gardening--the obvious, general ones like getting rid of our life-weeds so as to strengthen our roots/soul--but then also the personalized ones that come up as small but complex issues need to be sorted in the vegetable bed. As the hands naturally sort through weeds and go through the leaves of distressed plants, so the mind goes through the issues of life we need to sort out: how to counsel the children, what we must ask God for, and which doors He is opening to us, asking us to do His will.

I worked for the best part of an hour before taking a water break. I loved every minute of it. I felt like I was somehow back to a place I had so missed. I could feel that it was doing my soul good. Thank You, Lord, for your presence in my life, and for meeting me in the the dirt of the vegetable garden.

before

after

two rows

...and a prairie summer storm.