Homegrown Is Alright with Me

I'm not Mr. Gardening or Mr. Artistic or anything like that, but I think my wife does a great job selecting and designing the flowers and shrubs around our home. But what she really excels at is her "Green Thumb" in our garden.

Debbie and I got married in February of this year -- and previously, I'd never enjoyed the thrill of having a beautiful and fruitful garden.  I have to admit I like coming home and seeing all that beauty, especially this time of year when everything is so colorful.  I also like the surprises from one day to the next as new things pop up out of the ground.

I could never have done this. I can buy the soil and drop the bags where she tells me to, I can lift and carry, I can run the hose, and I can grumble and complain about how hot it is, but I could never do the creative part like she does.

This garden is still relatively new.  She said we overdid it with too many things planted in the space we allotted -- and I suppose she was right.  Still I think everything about this is all just great.

It would be remiss of me not to write something related to celebrating the joys of our summer garden: bountiful tomatoes; firm cucumbers; plump, petite zucchinis; and delicious eggplants. Oh, how Debbie's garden stands as a metaphor for our life together.

God calls us to ‘cultivate our garden’.  The guidelines for creating a beautiful garden run parallel to the secrets of a beautiful life. Digging to discover nature’s laws we uncover the reality that the spiritual is what governs the entire universe.

Rekindling our relationship with nature we learn to harmonize our own nature, “let nature be our teacher.”  Recognizing that all creation is governed by the cycles of gestation, birth, growth, decay and death shows us how to maintain balance through life’s phases and to see value at every stage. Viewing nature as a metaphor for life we can hone our gardening skills to create the field of the deepest desires of our heart.  In my case it is to see the love I have for this woman bloom into the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my entire life.

The five stage process directs us to attend to our lifescape’s weeding, landscaping, sowing, nurturing and harvesting. If followed sincerely it can create a gorgeous future garden, a place where we radiate in the full fragrance of our blossoming potential.

I love this garden -- but how much more I love the woman who envisioned it first in her mind -- and then acted to grow and nurture it -- my beautiful gift, Debbie.