Welcome to September!
When I think of September, my mind goes to cooler mornings, hot chocolate, bonfires, and all the kiddos going back to school! Of course, I’m aware that it still feels like summer, and Autumn Equinox is a few weeks away. And if you live where we do, the kids all went back about a week and a half ago! Regardless, we still have those associations in our minds, don’t we? Falling leaves, cooler nights, and new beginnings.
When we start getting into the autumn, we start harvesting the yummy things in our gardens! I’ve been pulling tomatoes out for about a week now, and my peppers are soon ready as well. I’ve spent the summer picking cucumbers, mint, chamomile and all kinds of herbs. Tonight, I pulled a few tiny new potatoes out of the garden – the rest aren’t ready yet – and we boiled them up with supper, and served them with just a little butter and salt. With fresh, homegrown food, you don’t need to do anything complicated. And as we sat to eat them, I said out loud, “It amazes me that I put these in the ground a few months ago. I put someone’s trash in the ground months ago. And here they are, perfect and delicious.” You see, a few months ago, my dear friend had a box of potatoes that went bad on her counter. They’d grown eyes and were sprouting! She handed them over to me and I planted them, in my recycled plastic totes on my driveway. I put them in the best soil I had, let them soak up the sun. I watered them, weeded them, and took care of them all summer long. And even though I did all those things, I wasn’t the one who did all the work. Even if I’d done all the right things, I could still have dug into the ground and gotten nothing. Or gotten potatoes without the right starch/sugar content that wouldn’t cook. Or I could have gotten a pile of mush. Because I’ve done all those things before.
Anyone who grows a garden knows that it’s as much magic as it is science. That you have to have the right mix of sun and shade, of nutrients in the soil, of warm and cool days. Even the earthworms that live in the soil, and the bees and butterflies that pollinate our gardens play a part. Truly the gardener is only one part of the chain that creates life and beauty in our gardens.
The garden is my favorite place to be. Standing outside in my bare feet, sweaty (and usually sunburned!), dirty, and hopeful is a unique kind of magic. As gardeners, we are made of hope. And even when a plant fails, we come back the next year and try again. We hope, over and over again that our efforts will be fruitful.
I believe that the garden is such a great lesson for life. As people, we grow and change and work at so many things. We create goals, and we pour our hopes into them. We can pray...but prayer doesn’t do anything unless we also plant the seeds and nurture them. And even then, we still have to remember that we are not in control of everything. Our plans may be re-aligned by other forces that are out of our control. It’s easy to get upset when you’ve put a lot of time and effort into a plan, and watched it fail. It’s just as easy as it is to get discouraged when you’ve planted lavender three years in a row and nothing comes up. But we have to have the hope of gardeners. We have to be ready to try again. Sometimes that means changing our behavior – watering differently, or changing the location in the garden. Sometimes we have to choose a different path completely – like growing a different species that’s more resistant to pests. And just like gardening, we have to do that in our lives – change our path, change our behavior, look for more information and even help from others to learn more. We have to work to be better, to grow stronger.
The truth? Even when we find a good harvest, we keep working to grow ourselves. Everyone has the capacity to grow, and change, and be someone new. We just need a little dirt, sunshine, and don’t forget the magic.
Blessed be, and may all your harvests be beautiful this season!
