The Happy Gardener

Last week I told my husband, “We may need to make a bit of a budget in springtime. For your wife’s happiness, in the form of plants.”

I started a few seeds, truth be told, in January. And then there was the twenty-cent seed rack: Canterbury Bells. Snapdragons. Moss roses. Sugar-snap peas. Petunias. Jalapenos. Basil. Coleus. Zinnias in these explosive colors. (I am an equal-opportunity planter.)

That was next to the display of blueberry plants (perfect for pollinating the one I got last year at the end of the season!), and one of my favorites: pink, globe-shaped peonies. Two of those, please. (I took them out of the package and actually heard myself saying to these stumpy, brown roots, “Come here, you beautiful little things.”)

This week, on a breezy afternoon on my deck, I plunged my fingers happily into my soil, mixing it. I wondered if maybe all those farmer ancestors of mine really could have deposited some love of growing things in my blood. And then I gathered my two youngest kids around me to watch the peat pellets grow as I added water to my seed starter. My daughter fluffed them and added a seed to each one and labeled them on popsicle sticks. Seeds are happy, promising things.

But it’s the middle of April here in the mountains. I posted this photo on Instagram last night: “My babies are waiting for full-on spring in Colorado “.

…And it’s supposed to snow tonight. (Snowed last night, too.) We need it; the snowpack is too low, which can mean fire in the summer. So I can’t wish for it to be over yet in good conscience. The neighbor says a few years ago, they got nine inches on Mother’s Day.

I might be waiting a bit longer. Even if my sun room is kind of tinyish.

But my excitement for these things to grow (little miracles, I am convinced, each of them) has to be a little like God’s.

The Happy Gardener

Tim Keller reminds me that God’s creation—and presumably His continued creation around us and in us—was work. Yet He “made the world not as a warrior digs a trench but as an artist makes a masterpiece.”*

He kept celebrating his work. This is goooood. He was a happy gardener!

How much more than me does he know precisely where to plant each brand of beauty and nourishment?

And in these weeks where things remain a bit frozen–outside, yes, but at times within me, too–I wonder if he peeks at his “pots” in me. Maybe he does it with the giddiness I do, spotting the thinnest blade of green. (Probably not with my outright surprise, but still.)

If he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t break a bruised reed (Isaiah 42:3), surely he watches for the equivalent of limp leaves or aphids or an extra inch of growth like I do. Surely he’s performing far more than poking his great finger in the top inch of soil to check the moisture.

Perhaps like me, he’s a little too exuberant for the right time to melt my “winters” inside (see this post!). Maybe he’s anxious for the season to be done; to have the green time again.

The “Bring it On” Gardener

There’s a prophecy in Isaiah about the future that pictures God as this type of gardener I like.

“A pleasant vineyard, sing of it!
I, the LORD, am its keeper;
every moment I water it.
Lest anyone punish it,
I keep it night and day;
I have no wrath.
Would that I had thorns and briers to battle!
I would march against them,
I would burn them up together.
Or let them lay hold of my protection,
let them make peace with me,
let them make peace with me.”

What I like is this kind of “bring it on” gardener I see in God. The verse before talks about how he’s already slain the enemy of this garden (Isaiah 27:1). But he’s still got this fierce protectiveness in him, see? I Wish I had something to battle, because I love this vineyard so much. (This is where I divert from the character of God. Even the little aphids I’m battling drive me batty.) I hear his longing. Let them lay hold…let them make peace with me. 

Beauty of Ten Thousand Times

My daughter asked this week how the seeds know what to do, and when to do it. Um.

Such a reminder to me that a seed–like the snapdragon seeds no bigger than the period on this sentence–can contain the potential for beauty, what? Ten thousand times its size (totally guessing, #notamathgirl. But the finished product can be 36 inches tall!). There is no brain involved in that little organic dot. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 

Miracles, I tell you. And our lives are utterly dependent on graces like this, that feed us and clothe us.

Bonus: I do suppose God is more patient than I am. As much as I truly love snow, my love for plants and that smell of spring is surpassing right now. At least in the waiting, I can share his enthusiasm a little, willing growth and beauty with him.

Like this post? You might like 

The Happy Potter

New Year’s 2018: When You’re Hoping for Hope

Memos from a Landing: Thoughts on a Bumpy Transition

*Keller, Timothy. Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work. New York: Penguin (2104), p. 34.