As many of you will know by now, I’m a novice gardener.
I say novice because last year was the first time I did anything like a full garden by myself, start to finish (and yes, by that I do also mean buying some starter plants from the nursery).
But I’ve tried for years to keep some houseplants alive, with limited success. Very limited, actually. I have one aloe vera plant in my current house that I’ve had for a few years, a spider plant that has maybe lived for five, and an orchid that’s about 18 months old. Everybody else is a newcomer by a wide margin.
I tried outdoor gardening on the hunch that maybe I would have more success with sunshine, wind and rain than my own ability to gauge soil moisture content. And that having plants I could eat might help motivate me towards better care.
Well, last week I finally started some seeds for this year’s garden. And as I sat in my kitchen (because it was way too cold to do this on my deck), trying desperately not to get potting soil everywhere, I couldn’t help but thrill a little at the thought of these little seeds growing into little plants and then – hopefully one day – big plants full of eggplants, and bell peppers, tomatoes and herbs.
These little seeds need a very particular environment- moist, warm, and not too bright – to germinate. They don’t need any extra feeding of fertilizer at this point, though soon enough they will. Right now, all their nutrients are contained in that tiny little seed, which is right now, I hope, breaking open into a first fragile little root.
Over the next ten weeks (nine and a half by now!), I will care for these six little seed pots that I started, and add a great deal to their number. I will harden them off when the weather gets nice by bringing them outside for a few hours, then a few more, then a full day, then overnight too. I will move them from little seed starting trays to small pots, to medium ones, then to large grow bags that are the best I can do in a city condo. And I will use grow lights, and sunshine; fertilizer and mulch; support stakes and whatever else to help them grow strong and tall and abundant.
All this care I intend to give to my little plants has reminded me of a great quote that I saw moving around the internet right when winter set in:
“Don’t forget to drink water and get some sun. You’re basically a houseplant with more complicated emotions.”
And boy does that feel true.
Especially right now when I’m a little extra tired and probably a little dehydrated too. It’s a good reminder that starting with the basics might feel silly but rarely is it wrong.
That sometimes when life gets a little nutty and we’re stretched extra thin, we need to care for ourselves with all the tenderness we might save for a fragile little tomato seedling: water, light, food. Shelter.
It also reminds me of a wonderful detail pointed out in the book Good Enough by Kate Bowler and Jessica Ritchie, in their retelling of Mary encountering the risen Christ’s appearance outside of his empty tomb:
She mistook him for the gardener.
They give lots of possible reasons why that might be, but the list ends with this: “Maybe this gardener looks like he knows something about hope – hope that Mary desperately needs.”
Maybe Jesus looked like a gardener to Mary because he exuded that kind of patient, attentive caring that gardeners have. The hope that despite all odds, things will grow and flourish and even thrive.
Maybe we can learn from him, in this.
Maybe we can care for ourselves, and others this way, too. With tenderness and focus and also hope.
Whether you’re starting your seeds right now, anticipating the coming growing season, or not; this too is something you can do. I hope you will.
-Pastor Jen
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