Gardening Has Gone to Pot
Around the Turner household gardening has gone to pot. Literally.
The best laid plans sometimes call for laying down your hoe, buying five and a half dozen plastic pots, and buying thirteen cubic feet of soil.
Our garden has been planted completely above ground in pots that are a barrier between our future harvest and the poisonous soil below. It’s quiet the dichotomy, the prospect of life hovering over death constantly, slowly growing until we can dance around on the sick soil in our yard with our first tomatoes and celebrate the first fruits of harvest. In the curse of toil is found much blessing for those that don’t work with blessings and curses in the first place. We are having our life abundantly. Wendell Berry would be proud of how we are practicing resurrection.
We are all pots in a way. We give meaning to our "dusty" life when we follow the way of Jesus, our potter. Providentially, I wrote this in my prayer book the day before purchasing the pots for our garden:
We walk on dust that is ever new.
It is part of me and part of you.
Dust living and dust returning to dust.
Who are we then, but pots of little value?Our value is in the potter, the creator, the maker
He has spring forth from death
And brought sin to the undertaker
Conquered—Its gates will not stand
Against the light inside these specks,
Dust on the way to the coming kingdom.
The garden will rise slowly from the pots. It was a quiet week of lots of rain but no sun at all, and our plants are aching for some light. The pollen came and went. Allergies are here to stay. Its only May, but hope is building that we have defeated our situation and will persevere.
But the curse of the gardner (and farmer) is this: time will tell.
More Everyday Liturgy on gardening:
Morning Gardening and Simple Prayers
