Gardening

Hello all my awesome supporters, friends, and family,

I hope you are doing well!! I feel like I have been very bad at updating my blog lately, which I won’t use excuses for… I will however, promise to be better at updating all of you on a more regular basis.

Over the last few weeks, I have added to my daily duties that of gardener, which seems very fitting as my German friends like to point out, my last name means: Tree Gardener. I guess it must be in the genetics or something, but lately I have been helping Wes, the man who is head of Greenhaven Charity, plant little onions, corn, and potatoes in the garden on the Farm. It is a rather small plot of earth, but for the eight of us living on the farm, it will provide some additional food over the winter months, and for this city girl, it is an opportunity to embrace living on a farm and learning how to do all those things that farmers do. I am trying to embrace farm life, but I’m not sure if I enjoy all the weeding and digging. I’m hoping that as I watch the plants grow, it will make all the hours of toil and sweat worth it.

In addition to planting the vegetable garden, I have had the opportunity to plant the flower garden as well. We have beautiful peonies and dahlias coming up, which seem (at least right now) to be far more rewarding than planting the vegetable garden (and I have to admit, I am sick of looking at potatoes after planting nearly 20 rows of them!). I also got the chance to plant 30 cedars the other day (thankfully, I didn’t have to dig 30 holes, Wes went ahead of me digging as I planted all the little trees). Sometimes, I think God must just laugh at us because I remember a year ago telling someone that I would NEVER garden… little did I know that God would change everything, and He really has. Sometimes, I think the only thing that gets me out of bed in the early morning to weed is the realization that planting seeds (or bulbs) is a lot like life. God plants a seed in someone’s heart or mind, and it just grows from there. We may not see the seed that was planted or even know that it is there, but God knows, and He waters and tends that little seed until the time is right, and a little plant pops out. Sometimes, I know that I’ve planted something in the ground, and I look at the black clay like soil and wonder if anything will ever happen, then one day, almost over night, a little plant just blossoms and peaks its head out as though it is afraid of this big world above the ground.

I guess, I see a lot of similarities between my work in the garden and the work that we do here on the farm (and so many do in their own daily lives). We plant seeds (sometimes unknowingly), and we carefully love and tend the ground in which we have planted. Then, we continue to care for this little patch of earth or even person, until one day, something happens, completely out of our control, but completely within the plan of our Maker. I think the one thing that I have been learning on the Farm, especially with the guests is that all I can do is be myself, remain compassionate for others, know that God is doing all the work, and know that God is working through me, even when I am grumpy, or sad, or happy or however I am feeling that day. God has never looked at a piece of earth or a person as useless, and I think we can all look back on our own lives to give credit to that statement. So, like a seed, I will carefully and kindly love the people who surround me, and know that it is God who is doing all the work.