garden

I have a confession to make (this just might get me written out of my father’s will… yikes!). I HATE gardening. Yup, can’t stand it. All that kneeling in the dirt, pruning, weeding, cultivating, dead-heading, transplanting and watering drives me CRAZY! Actually, it’s more time consuming with a side of allergic reaction (I literally get hives if my arm brushes a leaf when I pick tomatoes) + “where the heck did my kids get to in the two seconds it took me to pull out this dandelion?”. At this stage in my life, gardening feels like one more thing I have to do. I can hardly keep up with the usual demands let alone find time to prettify a patch of dirt that my kids will inevitably trample.

That being said, there is a garden at the side of our house that I’ve invested considerable time into. It’s the little plot we like to call our vegetable garden. As much as neither Mr. T or I enjoy gardening, we have dreams of growing fantastic vegetable/herb gardens (we’d also like to keep some chickens but that’s a story for another day). We love to cook so the thought of growing our own produce excites us and our children. It takes the ideal of eating local to a new level (UBER local as our oldest once put it!).

Try as we might, in the three years we’ve lived in this house, we’ve never had a truly successful vegetable garden. There is an awkward little tree that blocks the fullness of the afternoon sun. There are numerous rocks and chunks of brick left over from when they built the house scattered though out the garden. The dirt doesn’t seem to be deep enough in parts (last summer our carrots grew 2 inches wide and only a couple of inches long). Don’t get me started on the weeds. No matter how many times I pull them out, they always grow back. More than anything, the soil in our would be bountiful vegetable garden needs replenishing. There just doesn’t seem to be any nutrients left in it. It is spent. The entire garden needs to be dug up and turned. The rocks need to get pulled out. We need to fill it with new soil that is full of life- soil that will feed our garden instead of just holding up the roots. But that my friends, is going to take a heck of a lot of work. And time. And energy.

A couple of weekends ago I found myself working in our little vegetable garden that could trying to get it ready to plant. I was completely frustrated and nearly in tears. Every time I stuck my shovel in the ground, I struck a rock. It took me over an hour to weed what seemed to be a very small section. The kids were running wild and I ended up getting sprayed with the hose. My nose and eyes were dripping because I’m allergic to nearly everything outside in the spring. I was a mess.

As I stood there ranting to myself, dirt under my nails and streaked on my face, it struck me that our garden is a picture of my inner life right now. I am spent. Depleted. I’m worn out like overused soil. I’ve been giving and doing and pressing on but haven’t taken any time to replenish myself for YEARS. I’ve got rocks hidden in my depths and weeds in my heart. I desperately need to dig in and replenish my spirit. I long to produce a bountiful harvest in my life but nothing much is going to grow in this tired soil. Just like our vegetable garden, that is going to take a heck of a lot of work. And energy. And time. But I know that there is no other way.

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