I Have a Garden

I have a garden. I don't refer to myself as a gardener because let's just assume that if my mothering skills are mediocre, my gardening skills are, well, I'm not a gardener. We are leading up to our 4th summer in our home that we built on part of my parents' farm. For the past 3 summers, I figured that if I was going to live on a farm, I should at least plant a garden. Basically, it goes something like this: I vow in the spring when I put my little seedlings in the ground that I'm going to keep the weeds at bay and by mid-summer, my garden is producing that widest of variety - of weeds - that you have ever seen. As fall approaches, I harvest what is left of the any good fruit and leave the weeds to feast on the rest.

This winter has been a long and hard one. My girls are all small and there is little for us to do. In the fall and spring, we take walks, ride bikes, and visit playgrounds. In the hot summer months, we play on slip'n slides and visit the pool often. But once the snow covers the ground, there are days and weeks I feel like a prisoner in my own life. To take them anywhere is a major chore and so I am left to choose between sitting at home and dwelling on my boredom or loading them up and letting my stress level elevate with every incessant comment I make, "Sit down! Don't climb on that table. We need to use our inside voices here. Don't lick the salt shaker!" The snow melted a few weeks ago, and for the first time in my life that I can remember, I was happy to see it go!

This week, we have had 3 gorgeous days of weather in the 50's and 60's. Unusual, for February in Ohio, but I figured Mother Nature owed it to us after snow being on the ground most of December. Next week, February will return. This week, has also been plagued with phones calls to schedule appointments for my 5 year old who has a toothache, but won't let a dentist fix it, a 5 hour round trip to Columbus to get the tooth looked at, and sickness on my part. Needless to say, my nifty little schedule I made, didn't go according to plan. So today was Friday, 60 degrees and sunny outside screaming in one ear and a filthy house nagging the other. And drats, I already cleaned the van out yesterday, so I couldn't use that as an excuse to be productive and outside!

So, I decided to garden, in February, in Ohio. I turned over a new plot of sod to plant my potatoes in this year and I still wasn't ready to head back inside, so I set to cleaning up all those weeds that I left there this past fall. The soft ground from the January snow melt combined with the dormant roots allowed me to pull the once stubborn, but now dead weeds from the ground almost effortlessly. Suddenly, I found myself feeling thankful for those long winter months. I'm pretty sure God is the master gardener because He uses my garden to speak to me so often. There is a time for every season : the long, cumbersome, lonely days of winter are very much needed to strip away the grip weeds have on our lives and to prepare the soil of hearts to plant new seeds of faith, hope, and love. Next week, when winter returns to Ohio, I'm going to try focus on that...