Gardening

When Spring is come to garth[1] and field, and corn is in the blade;

When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid;

When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,

I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.

When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;

When Straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;

When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,

I'll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!

-JRR Tolkien

The long cold of winter has settled in. It’s in the bones of our homes and for some of us in our hearts. The last of the holidays is petering out and we now face weeks of cold. What do we do during this time? Enjoy the quietness of these few weeks before spring, recover from the holidays with a hibernation stillness, and start dreaming about growing things.

First, gardening isn’t female-centric nor is it required of the homemaker. Many men love to garden. I would go so far as to say gardening is human. We started in a garden. We feed ourselves from gardens. They’re enjoyment and necessity, hobby and a living. Gardening may not fit in your life right now, but you shouldn’t deny the very real healing and comfort plants bring to the human soul.

Second, for the sake of this article, I’m using the term gardening to mean any sort of living plant grown in the dirt. This can be a succulent in a pot, a cactus on your windowsill, or an entire yard turned into high-yield crops. Gardening is fingers in the dirt and growing green things.

Tending the earth, even if it is only a little bit of it, is good for us.

I’m going to narrow that truth down to us homemakers in an entirely no-pressure way. We are all at different phases of life with different demands and desires. Some of us will play in the dirt until our dying day and some of us are plant serial killers… and some are both. If this isn’t a subject that you love, just go on with your week. If this is a subject you’re not sure about, then settle in, and let's talk about gardening as a homemaker from a bit more philosophical level. Meaning, I’m not going to give you gardening pointers. I come from a long line of gardeners but I’m just starting on this journey myself. There are plenty of books, podcasts, shows, documentaries, blogs, and YouTube videos that can take you from beginner to composting your excrement. Not even kidding. The point is, I don’t have anything to give you as far as gardening tips, but I can talk to you about why you should garden.

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” – Martin Luther

Gardening, ladies, is a natural outlet for our nurturing hearts, our love of beauty, and our fortitude. God has filled the earth with these SILENT living things that freshen the air, bloom in riotous colors, provide shade, and food. Some are about as high-maintenance as a Hollywood Prima-donna and some are as humble as… well, a housewife. But, plants, dear sisters, warm a room like little else. They produce a relaxed air and tell everyone to smile, rest, and wait. Outside gardens produce blooms, herbs, and vegetables. When we spend some of our precious time tending plants we are being productive.

Gardens of all sorts, shapes, and sizes are tangible ways we can be good stewards of the space God has given us—from apartment balconies to hundreds of acres. They help us give more to our families and others. They tame the wild in the right way. They crown our homes with beauty and empower us to heal ourselves and our people. They also provide much-needed life lessons:

·         Control and Trust: It’s easy in our modern world to think we’re in control of much of life because we carry around computers in our pockets and can have food delivered to our doors. Planting seeds or baby plants smacks us in the face with our finite dependence on the Lord and the Noahic Covenant. Just try. Try to grow a plant from seed to harvest. I’ll wait. Gardens force us to realize that we can do all the right things and things won’t live. We can pour our very blood into the ground, grow beautiful plants, and then a blight will hit. Lightning will strike our favorite oak. Mites will destroy our beloved roses. Gardening teaches us we aren’t in control and we have to trust the Lord. This is doubly emphasized if you grow food. Think about bearing the responsibility of feeding your family based on what you can get the earth to produce. Think about being dependent on the weather for abundance or starvation. Gardening is humbling. Gardening teaches us to keep our grip on this world loose. Gardening teaches us to trust the Lord.

·         Gentle Battle: Gardening is a war that women have engaged in for thousands of years. We fight the bugs, the birds, the heat, the dirt. We harness rot and worms to aid us. We get up early and ruin hands and backs and knees in an effort to tame the wild earth into bounty. This is a fight. And yet, it is a gentle battle because we are nurturing small plants with delicate blooms. There is a femininity to this fight. On the one hand, we have the woman in a long dress, barefoot in the grass, trailing her fingers through vibrant petals, inhaling the deep fragrance of flowers, gathering herbs in a wicker basket, or even tying back her hair and canning her harvest. All these things require a gentle, kind, loving cherishing or things will get crushed, broken, and bruised. On the other hand, this is where we put on our armor, grab a tent stake, and start cracking skulls. The earth is not going to give up her resources easily. At every moment the gardener is thwarted because we live in a fallen world. The ground is too hard, too sandy, and filled with grubs. The squirrels beat us to the harvest. A late frost destroyed seedlings. A summer of merciless heat burnt everything to a crisp. Nature is not some weak invalid waiting for us to cover her knees in a soft quilt. She’s violent and powerful and not really on our side. Gardening gives us a chance to both rage and war and to gently tend. Life is often both of these things at the same time. Gardens let us engage in that experience.

·         Theological Truth: The Bible is filled with gardening illustrations. If you want to better understand the Parable of the Sower, grow a garden. And it’s not just specific stories. Gardening reminds us of the truth of not eating without working. It reminds us that our work is always dependent on the Lord from pastoring to mothering. Gardening reminds us that God is good and kind and takes care of everything from the bugs to the birds to us. Gardening reminds us that the Lord loves diversity and beauty. Gardening keeps us humble. Gardening keeps us hopeful. As quoted above, if the world is going crazy we still plant our seeds because we have hope in the Lord. There is much rich truth to be mined from growing anything.

·         Fruit: Gardening lets us enjoy the fruit of our labors. Sometimes as homemakers, we can struggle with seeing our production. Much of what we produce is repetitive, intuitive, or character related. In other words, it’s invisible or short-lived. Cook a meal and it’s gone in a flash. Dishes never cease to need doing. Things don’t stay clean. Gardening is a great way to enjoy the fruit of our labors. From seedlings to flowering to fruiting, gardens give us tangible production. Not only are they nice to look at, but they’re also generally appreciated by all, and they provide beauty and food. It can energize us in our work to have this tangible production right outside our door. And it helps us appreciate the men and women who grow and harvest and transport our food. We do this small scale for only a few and not as our only form of provision. Some people do this large scale for many, and some people are dependent on what is grown in their gardens for their very lives. Gardening gives us thankfulness and enjoyment.

We often repeat in this group that we guard and garden our hearts. If you want a rich understanding of that, try growing anything. It’s not as easy as it looks. It takes prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance to grow a garden well. It takes faith, hope, and love to encourage plants to grow and bloom and seed and repeat. So much of what happens in the garden is out of our hands, and yet we must weed and watch and pray. Our hearts are the stoniest ground in which to try and grow anything. We must labor long and hard to entice the tiniest of seedlings to sprout. And yet, the work is worth it. The blood, sweat, and tears are worth it when we get to watch the Lord work and the flowers bloom.

For us homemakers, gardens allow us to create beauty and rest around our structures as well as in. They let us practice hospitality by creating curb appeal that welcomes people into our dwellings. Who doesn’t love entering a home surrounded by growing things? Gardens give us tools to provide for our families, be they bouquets or vegetables or herbs. Flowers make every space they’re in light up. Plants inside help the human soul rest and revitalize. Take some time to notice the difference between rooms with no plants and rooms with plants. Vegetables are good for us and make great snacks and sides. Plus, the vegetables we grow ourselves tend to have a magical richness to their flavor that store-bought simply can’t match. Herbs are some of the best medicines money can buy. They can be incorporated for the maintenance of the body or to help with specific ailments. All of this is at our fingertips if we learn to garden. Gardens, flower beds, herbs, and houseplants are powerful resources for us homemakers, and they’re something the whole family can engage in and learn from. We can be scientific about it or go all hag witch and just let the garden run wild. We can do everything ourselves or get kits and hired help. However we go about gardening, we can be confident it will be good for us and our homes.

Gardens are much like us, HearthKeepers. They are producers of food and beauty. They are humble and amazing at the same time. People don’t often think about what goes on in a garden, but they all enjoy the fruit thereof. We are like that in our homes. We cook our meals and create our unique environments for the sake of the people around us. Our jobs are just the jobs of ordinary living and yet they are the one most important jobs around. People often discount us, shame us, or try to frighten us out of our work, and yet everyone is looking for home. It may be winter, but spring is coming.

[1] Old world term for garden