The Prayer Garden

In the spirit of Dr. McCoy in Star Trek, I’m a housewife, not a gardener.  At least not yet.  I do have a vegetable garden, but it’s in my parents’ backyard and they do most of the work.  Combine my lack of gardening knowledge with my excitement about the final Harry Potter movie (which was awesome - and yes, I wore my Gryffindor scarf), and I’ve really been struggling with this post.  But I want to write about our garden because I love it, and I think that our 3 little leafy patches of soil are good for our family and maybe even the world.

This season I’m just happy to observe and learn from my parents who have thumbs as green as that wall in Fenway Ballpark.  They were hardcore gardeners in the 1970s, and their crazed devotion to health food merits its own story in the next post.  Stay tuned.

I may not be its #1 caretaker, but the garden was my idea.  I’d been getting irrationally annoyed at the wax they put on tomatoes at the grocery store, and buying lettuce in plastic bags just rubs me the wrong way.  Like individually wrapped candies, it just seems wasteful.  Plus maybe I could get Michelle Obama’s toned arms from pulling weeds.  She planted a garden at the White House after all, and even though we have very different levels of arm firmness, The First Lady and I are both familiar with the physical and emotional benefits of gardening:

• Lowers food costs  
• Reduces the use of pesticides
• Reduces my food miles
• Improves nutrition for my family
• Improves food security for the nation
• Reduces stress
• Rewards patience
• Deepens relationship with nature
• It’s a good source of fresh air and mild form of exercise
• It looks pretty.

So we planned to till the garden in late April or early May, but then the rain started.  It didn’t stop.  Basement sump pumps were so overworked they probably unionized behind our backs; Tornado sirens blared “Welcome back to Indiana” in mid-May; and Teddy had to go the vet after drinking out of a puddle of standing water.  Thanks a lot Mother Nature.

But we did it.  We dug through soil as thick as fudge and built three raised bed plots.  Building just one of them took us as long as it took Dan Wheldon (I mean JR Hildebrand) to win the Indy 500.  We planted onions, beans, squash, tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, lettuce and more.  And they’ve been growing.  Perhaps too well:  I found a deceptively cute bunny munching on one of our pepper plants.  It even had the gusto to stare sideways through the fence at me 15 minutes later, lusting after the carrots.  I have a renewed empathy for Mr. McGregor.  Peter Rabbit is a thief.

But here’s the thing, while growing plants is a challenge, gardening is a joy.  

I recently learned on a trip to a restored Shaker village in Kentucky that the Shakers believed that their work was an expression of prayer.  It didn’t matter if it took them two days or two months to built a chair or till the fields, the time they spent in pursuit of their craft was a meditation to God.

Deep, I know. But I totally get it.  Despite the late planting, the fudgey soil, the worries over rain or drought, the endless weeds and furry thieves, my garden is a haven. A leafy cathedral where prayers are made of sweat and laughter, where we improve ourselves and the world with each weed plucked.  So we head to the Backyard. My dad turns on the hose for me to water the plants, and I see the green tomatoes teasing me with red specks, the bright yellow squash peeking out from under its huge green tent, and the lettuce’s chubby leaves sitting in the dark soil.  And I see my mom picking tart blueberries from that stubborn plant, and Teddy stretching his legs on the grass while Ian shoots half-inflated basketballs into a hoop.

We wait for the harvest, but in a way it’s already here.