By Mary
I've always been a bit of a black thumb...I never
really tried my hand at growing much when I was younger, and my first attempts
as an adult were pretty pitiful (my husband will never let me live down my
efforts with hydrangeas)
Somewhere along the line, I've become something
of a farm girl wanna-be, and even though I know I completely idealize certain
jobs like canning and bread-baking—which, of course, would always be done in
perfect peace in a mess-free kitchen with sunlight streaming through the
windows--the desire tends to wax rather than wane (can't I just get a cute
little mini Jersey cow and some chickens in an adorable coop?)
Unfortunately, my tendency to kill plants
has always been a bit of a downer on any homesteading-esque dreams, but last
year I got brave and actually planted things. Admittedly, the bravery mostly
came because we were living with my mom and everything seems so much more
doable if your mom is doing it with you, but at any rate, we did it. An evening
of research, an afternoon building a raised bed with my brother, a trip to the
garden center, a morning of nervously and prayerfully planting, and we had an
actual garden! That grew! And produced fruit!
I may have been pitifully excited, but it made
for a complete change in my perspective. Instead of assuming anything I touched
would eventually die off, I was hopeful. Maybe I could actually be a gardener!
But I had to get more informed. So this past year I've been reading
books and articles, learning about soils and companion plants, planting,
pruning, harvesting, composting, and fertilizing. I gathered ideas for how to
foodscape and blend the productive with the ornamental. I kept an
eye on the sunlight in our new yard over the winter and tried to plan
accordingly. We made a retaining wall raised bed and asked our landscaper to
put in apple trees and serviceberries. My procrastination even paid off this
time so that my plants were safe inside their little pots in my house when our
late May snow hit. I made some soil improvements and, again, prayerfully
planted.
We'll see what happens this year, but I'm excited. And I find with this newfound interest, different parts of the Bible are impressing me in different ways. One of my favorite examples is from John 15:1-2-“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit."
These verses were on my mind often, pruning last season's
tomatoes. When we first planted, we didn't know much about the pruning process
and were just happy seeing it grow full and tall and healthy. But eventually we
learned about suckers, the little branch-offs from the main branches. They
looked just as nice and healthy as the rest and they even made the plant look
more impressive, but they were sapping energy that should have been going
towards the flowers to bear fruit. With the suckers, there would still be
fruit. They weren't necessarily harmful. But pruning the suckers concentrated
the plant's energy along the productive branches to bear much fruit, a more
bountiful harvest than would have otherwise occurred.
This thought of
pruning is both a challenge and a comfort to me. A challenge to consider, am I investing
in things in my life that are detracting from what will bear fruit? On a daily
basis, am I guided more by the Spirit or by my to-do list? Am I open to pruning
off vacuuming for the day to make room for a more fruitful conversation? And a
comfort to consider that, however much I esteemed a thing, however attached I
may have been, if God is pruning it away, a more bountiful harvest is ahead.
