Growing Hope

This is year 3 (or is it 4?) of our attempt at a garden.

Each year, with a little more love, a little more time, a little more fertilizer, a little more water, - I'm slowly learning the importance of this one - and a little more sweet talk, our garden grows.

We've always been okay at cucumbers. I figure anyone with a chunk of dirt and a cucumber seed or two can get those guys out of the ground and growing. But things like pumpkins and carrots and even peas have been a bit of a challenge.

We've persevered though. Each year cussing a little less...(what? you guys cuss?...at inanimate objects nonetheless!) and looking ahead at what might work well (and not) the following year. Each year as the green takes longer than anticipated to break through the dirt, we vow to cover it all over the following year. Let's grass it over in the fall, we say. Mowing over it instead of around it will take much less effort. We talk about throwing in the towel and just going to our local market to enjoy fresh locally grown produce.

But there's something about growing your own food, isn't there? Wanting to make a salad and then only walking out the kitchen door, across the deck, along the non-sprinklered part of the lawn to the garden, and grabbing what is needed...it tastes different. Better. It's part of what rural means to me. It's part of how we want to raise our kids. It's part of the full circle understanding of the cycle of life.

It's about patience.

It's about knowing that we can only do so much and then we must wait.

Overwatering will harm what we seek to harvest.

Thinking it over, analyzing, obsessing, none of that will help.

Understanding that the best things in life are worth waiting for, that's what it's all about.

Do you get where I'm going with this?

You can take it at face value...feel free. Perhaps I just gave you a really brief lesson about gardening. (Likely not...my 3 year old has a much greener thumb than I.)

Or, perhaps I'm being metaphorical. Maybe, just maybe I'm looking past the cow poo manure and going a little deeper because I do truly believe there are so very many parallels in our life right now.

This year, after 3 years of trying and of frustrating unsuccessful attempts...

...this year, we grew carrots.

Sweet. Small. Juicy. Orange with perfect-leafy-tops, carrots.

It was worth the wait. The effort wasn't lost. The reward reaped was wonderful.

And I'm sure we'll try again next year, knowing better how to wait patiently.

Understanding that the best things in life do happen.

Coming to more fully grasp the concept that the destination is actually the journey.