Lessons from My New Babies

On the official first day of spring, I decided to start some seeds indoors for transplantation outdoors when the time comes. A new-to-me, money-saving venture. In two packages of zinnia seeds costing $1.50 each, I counted 60 seeds. Imagine getting 60 bedding plants for the price of one! I’d seen online where someone used cardboard egg cartons to start the seeds, one per cup, and then simply planted the whole tray so the paper could decompose and the seedlings would be evenly spaced. Seemed like a great plan.

I covered my kitchen table with newspaper and cut the lids off the five egg cartons I’d been saving. I stirred up some potting soil with water to make a nice mud, then spooned some into each egg cup, kind of like making drop cookies. After pressing the tops flat, I poked a one-quarter-inch hole in the center of each with a chopstick. Then, using tweezers, I dropped a seed into each hole and covered it with the soil.

I lined old cookie sheets with newspaper and placed the egg cartons on them, then lay them on a table in the living room where direct sunlight pours in for nine or more hours a day. I kept the soil damp. By Day Four, the first tiny sprouts appeared.

How many gazillions of times has this little ancient miracle played out on this earth? Yet still, it’s worthy of our awe. We can plant and water and fertilize, but we cannot give life. We cannot make a seed to save our lives. If God does not do his life-giving part, nothing happens. Partnership at its finest.

By Day Six, half the sprouts were up and the keeners among them reached for the sun. Now I’m watching, watering, and wondering. Will some fail to sprout? Will the plants become root-bound in those tiny egg cups before my garden’s warm enough to receive them? Will the paper disintegrate and everything fall apart? Already, I realize I’ll need to cut each cup apart or they’ll stand too close together to thrive in the garden.

Gosh, this gardening feels a lot like parenting.

Here’s the thing. If a seed fails, my first question is not, “What’s wrong with it?”

Instead, I wonder what it needs that it isn’t getting. I’m asking where I’ve failed.

Yet how often, when we see someone—perhaps ourselves—who isn’t growing like we think they ought, do we wonder what’s wrong with them instead of asking what they need? Seeds are made to grow. Given the right environment—soil, water, sun—they will. You and I were made to grow, too—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. We’re made to thrive, to become stronger the more we grow, the more challenges we overcome. When that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean something’s wrong with us. It means we need something we haven’t received.

Asking the right question can lead to better answers and help us to be kind to ourselves and others. My baby plants depend on me—without asking, begging, demanding, or worrying. They simply receive what I offer and do what they were made to do.

We thrive best when we allow the One who created us in the first place to be our source of light, our wellspring of nourishment, our foundation of love, our cradle of understanding, and our font of wisdom. When we stop striving and struggling. When we simply bask in his provisions and then do what He made us to do.

 

How My Garden Grows

Terrie, Terrie, quite ordinary,

How does your garden grow?

With beets and beans and lettuce greens

And cucumbers all in a row.

My tomatoes look dreadful and I don't know why.

This time of year, I love how every meal preparation involves stepping out to my garden for something. Given the skyrocketing food prices and the decrease in our household income this year, I thought it prudent to jam-pack my little garden with vegetables and keep my flower budget to zero. I took the geranium I’d barely kept alive indoors over the winter, divided it into three pots, and said, “God bless you.”

My resurrected geranium. Where there's life, there's hope.

Then my son gave me a lovely potted calla lily for Mother’s Day.

Then my sister-in-law gave me twenty bucks as a hostess gift, saying “Get yourself some flowers.” I bought a pot with a beautiful red/white/purple combination.

Then my friend gave me a gorgeous coral impatiens plant.

Then another friend gave me a pretty pot of pale purple calibrachoas.

I know, I’m spoiled.

Meanwhile, the geranium I thought I’d killed began showing delicate signs of life in all three pots. By the time they amount to anything, summer may be over, and it’ll be time to take them indoors for another winter. But still.

I also have three perennials faithfully doing their bit: daylilies, hydrangeas, and sedum.

All that to say, my “no flower” summer has turned into just enough flowers to bring joy to my soul and to demand their fair share of attention.

As for the vegetables, our cold wet spring made for a slow beginning. I planted the first week of June and finally harvested our first picking of lettuce on July first. By the next day, you couldn’t tell I’d picked at all. My spinach has been rather disappointing and the carrots even more so. Will they suddenly take of?

Zucchini is quickly taking over. I’m using them in stir-fries and salads and hope to freeze some for baked treats and soups.

Green beans showed up next, and I hope to harvest plenty for eating and even more for the freezer, but we’ll see. I planted way too many cucumbers, then thinned them to half. I should thin them to half again, but don’t have the heart. I’d love to harvest enough dill pickle-sized cukes at once to fill several jars, though. Most years, I save a week’s worth of pickings only to fill two or three jars. My last blood pressure check said I should avoid salt, so hubby will eat the pickles. Do you suppose I can make enough for his work-day sandwiches for a whole year?

 

 

Which brings me to the dill. I planted some new seeds in case last year’s didn’t come up voluntarily. It did.

I’ve got lots of beets, too. I throw the greens in salads until it’s time to pull up the root. We enjoy eating those cooked as a side dish, plus I always put several bags of beets in the freezer to use in borscht come winter.

Of course, can you even call it a garden if it doesn’t include tomatoes? I planted six this year. It’s already August and I’m still looking forward to biting into my first toasted tomato sandwich. Something to look forward to, I guess.

I hope you’re enjoying your own or someone else’s fresh garden produce this summer.

Unprecedented Conveniences

If I hear the phrase, “In these unprecedented times” once more, I might pitch a fit.

As an author of historical fiction, I spend large portions of my day immersed in the years before my birth. I try my best to get the details correct, researching as I go. When I walk away from my desk and go about other tasks, I’m often thinking about how my characters would complete the same tasks.

One day I hauled beets, carrots, and rhubarb from my garden into the house. By noon, a giant pot of borscht simmered on the stove, a bowl of beets was set aside for supper, with a couple of packages frozen for another day. Greens and stems were washed and refrigerated for use in salads and smoothies. The rhubarb was cooked, the carrots scrubbed and sitting in water in the fridge ready for snacking. I enjoyed my morning’s work but nearly collapsed after the kitchen was all clean again. 

 

I doubt I’d have survived if I’d had to do it the way my grandmother completed those same jobs 80 years ago. First, pumping water from a well and hauling it inside to heat on a wood-burning stove, for which I also had to split and carry the wood. Figuring out how to keep the fire at an even temperature. Canning, because freezing was not an option. Afterwards, heating more water to wash everything by hand and lugging the dirty water outside. Scrubbing the nasty beet stains out of all the dishrags and towels before hanging them on the line. All on a hot summer day with no air conditioning and no shower. 

 

It’s enough to raise my level of respect and admiration for previous generations. How could all that work not build character? I can’t help thinking our ancestors might roll their eyes if they heard us complaining about our difficult lives in these unprecedented times.

 

Will future historians identify a link between our entitlement and how we emerge on the other side of this pandemic? Will they remember us as perseverant, appreciative? Or will we go down in history as the most spoiled, the most consumer-driven generation ever? As people who didn’t possess the character required to overcome adversity? As folks outraged that they should be so inconvenienced by a pandemic?

Global pandemics are not new. The losses so far from Covid-19 are nowhere near unprecedented. Yes, it’s horrible. It’s sad. It’s frightening, it’s stressful, and it’s darn inconvenient. But it is not unprecedented.

That’s why a look at history can restore hope. We enjoy countless advantages over those who experienced pandemics in the past. If anything is unprecedented, it’s our lightning-speed communication, our modern testing methods, and our state-of-the-art medical systems. Don’t believe me? Then answer this: If you must go through a pandemic, would you rather do so in 1420, 1920, or 2020?

Experts tells us most pandemics last between 18 months and two years. Perhaps the better question is not, “how will we survive these times?” but “are we made of the right stuff?” May the precedent set by our forebears empower us, deepen our character, and generate lasting hope in our hearts.

“We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:4)

 

If My Hostas Could Talk

I knew when I planted them that it wouldn’t be ideal, but I did it anyway.

Six years ago, my sister gave me a bunch of Hosta plants. The long strip of crushed rock running along the east side of our fence screamed for something green and growing. Like most people, I knew Hostas love shade and that the strip would be too sunny for them. But since the plants cost me nothing, I plunged ahead.

Planting them turned out to be a crazy enough project to warrant a blog post of its own back in 2014. (Not, however, a story that made the cut for my book.) The job involved moving rock, chiseling holes through hard-packed gravel, filling them with compost, laying landscaping fabric on a windy day, and other exhausting shenanigans for which I have no energy six years later.

The Hostas have not exactly thrived. Oh, they’re gorgeous through June and partway into July. But by mid-summer, they usually look as appealing as an overflowing ashtray. Brown and burnt leaves replace lush and green ones. They are basically cooked.

It’s not the Hostas’ fault. Somebody planted them in a place where they were never intended to thrive.

Full disclosure. Not my hosta.

I pondered this one June day as I pulled weeds out from between them. They still looked beautiful and brimming with potential. They desperately needed dividing and still do, but any suitable spots I have for them would involve a repeat of the digging-holes-through-rock scenario. I can’t face it. So I leave them, knowing they’re going to do their best anyway.

I thought about how you and I were designed for a better place, too. The garden in which God placed his first people was beautiful beyond our imagination and perfectly good. Every physical, emotional, and relational need was met. Then our enemy moved in and nothing has been the same since.

We live in a broken world and deep inside, every one of us knows this is not where we truly belong. It’s why we demand justice and scream with indignation when confronted with evil, sickness, and death. Our souls long for a better place to grow to our full potential, where we can bless others with life and beauty.

But we remain stuck here. For now.

The wonder of my Hostas is that they have survived at all. They continue to grow, to reproduce, and to grace my yard with beauty despite their less than ideal conditions. They give what they can, when they can. I like to think they are stronger because they’ve had to survive the hot sun. Yes, they could do even better elsewhere and perhaps someday I will move them and give them that opportunity. Until then, they bloom where they are planted.

You and I can learn a lot from the humble Hosta plant. Let’s not wait for ideal circumstances. One day your creator will move you to a place of perfection, but until then…bloom!

“Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." (Jeremiah 17:7-8)