The Remnant

I don’t often talk about the Bible lessons that I teach because, frankly, I’m a better yakker than writer when it comes to such things. Today, however, I think I’ll give it a whirl because I have a little something to share.

We just finished a several month study of that familiar passage from Ecclesiastes 3.

To everything, there is a season,

and a time for every purpose

under the heavens…

I won't summarize two months worth of study in one post, but throughout, there were three constants:

Seasons…mere line segments in our eternal time lines.

And times...fixed points of opportunity

And purposes…. A simple word,

best rendered as delights.

It’s a beautiful passage, especially for a bunch of women like the ones in my class who are, shall we say, starting to feel the effects of too many seasons. We finished on Sunday with the reminder not to be so caught up with our season that we miss the opportunities for delight  hidden within it-- to look for the beautiful things promised in Ecclesiastes 3:11.

He hath made all things beautiful in time. 

 

That's in the perfect tense.

Not… He can make

Not...He plans to make

Not….He will make

Not even… He is making

But... He has made. 

He made it beautiful before we even entered the season.

It’s finished, completed, made beautiful, and perfectly polished just for the discovery.

 His gift to us, regardless of the season, is the treasure hunt.

Sounds like an adventure to me.

So I gave my class an assignment. I asked them to take their focus off of their seasons and to look, really look, for the delights. And  I asked them to report back to me when they found one. This morning, I found one of mine, and  I have decided to share it here.

You may remember this plant that the Duchess gave me back in November.

And you may remember my brown thumb...

And the way that it looked in February.

I yakked all about it here.

Well, I never did show that plant to the Duchess. Instead, I kept on killing it day by day. It finally ended up nothing but an empty pot of soil. No, I didn't take a picture. Just imagine the one above, but even more dead.

I found one last purple twig. It had fallen to the deck so I scooped it up and kind of crammed it back into the soil the way any brown thumber would do. Then, I watered it. And since this plant is called a Wandering Jew, I named it The Remnant of Israel.

Because that’s the kind of thing I do.

Well, you can probably guess where this is going...
I didn't really want to putter in the yard this morning. After all, it's  hot, and most things are dry and wilting. But when I went to turn on my hose, I happened to glance toward a forgotten corner of the yard, and this is what I saw.

I feel the uncontrollable urge to say, "Behold!"
There, right in the middle of my dry and wilted season, I saw God's hands peeking up from the soil.  

I was delighted.

Now, you green thumbers can have all the explanation that you want for The Remnant sprouting up like this.  Maybe the cram-it-down-in-the-soil trick really worked. As for me, I choose to call it a delight and believe that God made it beautiful for such a time as this.

Because you see, I have been going through a dried up season too. Maybe it's the looming empty nest, or maybe it's that pesky fibromyalgia that makes me feel a little old and tired sometimes, but I had begun to wonder if my best days were behind me.

But when I saw The Remnant this morning, I had a radical thought:

Maybe God has another blooming season planned for me, too.

Veggie Tales

Remember back in January, when Old MacDonald and his wife decided to plant some square foot gardens? I could hardly wait to be able to savor and share the fruit of our his labor. I put in my order… spinach for salads and smoothies… lots of lettuce… some broccoli, Brussels sprouts, summer squash…

…OK...actually, I can’t even remember all that I requested. In fact, I’m not completely sure what’s out there. It kind of looks like a jungle to me. This has actually become the husband’s pet project. Mr. Little Red Hen has done it all. He built the beds. He lugged the dirt. He planted the seeds. (OK, plants. He didn’t start from seed. The man is a salesman, not a farmer.)

He watered the plants…

…except when he is out of town. In those cases, I get the three syllable reminder. “Deb-or-ah… did you remember to water my garden?” I say that I have then skedaddle outside to make an honest woman of myself.

My job was supposed to be harvesting.

And then, overnight… those leafy greens burst forth into Vegetable Paradise. And I do mean overnight. Apparently, some vegetables grow as quickly and unexpectedly as daughters do.

Because when I went out for my walk yesterday morning, this is what I saw.

Doink!

So I ran like a happy camper up to my eaves where I keep my 4,276 baskets. And I found the one most similar to the arm basket in  my little fantasy land.

See?

Now, I happen to be fond of raw spinach. I do NOT happen to like cooked spinach. I have tried to like it, but it has the carrot and sweet potato effect on the tip of my tongue. Unfortunately, I also know that the best spinach for a fresh salad is that of a small leafed sort. And since I dropped the spinach ball and let ours grow into elephant ears, I figured that most of my first harvest would have to be used for something else.

So Popeye and Olive Oyl had pineapple/banana/spinach smoothies for breakfast. Now, I realize that the thought of a spinach smoothie probably triggers the ewwww button, but they are delicious.

And it came from our own garden.

So then I bagged up some more for the next few days.

And I shared a bag with a friend.

Because that was all part of the plan, too.

Today, I tackled some purpley green leafy stuff out there, and I’m planning a wonderful salad.
 And then...

...just as I was about to bring in the sheaves, I spotted THIS.

Broccoli.

The Great Green Hope.

Hanging my Head

This afternoon during Sunday dinner with The Duchess, I looked out her kitchen window and saw this.

The Duchess prides herself on her green thumb. This lovely plant is part of a set of six which the Duchess purchased as we planned my niece’s Great Wedding Adventure in November. Her wedding colors were plum and green (some day I’ll yak all about it…), and the Duchess felt that this colorful Wandering Jew would be the perfect compliment to the terraced areas around her reception venue. It was. After the wedding, the Duchess kept only two of the plants and offered sets of two to my sister (the bride’s mom) and to me.

Considering the uncommonly long and cold winter we have had in these parts, I think the Duchess’s plants look really hearty. And because I have YET to learn to manage this tongue, I told her so…

Oops.

Without thinking, the words slipped right out of my mouth and sailed through the air. I reached up with the hands to kind of back pedal them in, but it was too late. She had heard. And then, well of course, she inquired as to the condition of my own set of Wandering Jews. I muttered something about the cold winter and the lack of sunshine and about that thumb that I had inherited from my father.

She sighed and titched. And she told me to bring my plants to her house so that she can nurse them back to health.

Now, I realize that it’s a little silly for a 48 year old wife and mother of two to be afraid of her own mom…

But mine look like this.

Anyone else think that I’m about to get the the two syllable scolding?

I have a dream...

In honor of MLK Day, I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, this little grave looking plot of land will be flourishing vegetable garden.

I have a deep abiding love of fresh vegetables. I remember, during the terrible horrible very bad no good year, that the hardest sacrifice for me was eating vegetables out of a can. A store can. A store brand can, the kind that’s really half water/half pastel whatsit. It was horrible but necessary since the cost of fresh (and often frozen) produce was out of the budget. I was never so thrilled as when dear friends would share vegetables from their gardens.

Since then, I have wanted desperately to be able to bless it back with vegetables from my own. Additionally, I don’t ever want to be caught in a veggieless situation again. I have learned the lesson of the recession.

There are two major impediments to my dream. The first would be my brown thumb. I can’t even keep a houseplant alive without major intervention from the husband, who travels all week, or my green- thumbed daughter, who is away at school. Oh, I long to be a Mrs. Greenjeans. I envision myself one, standing in the middle of my own Eden, basket cradled on the arm, bringing in the sheaves….In my vision, I’m usually wearing a big pretty hat… but to call that vision a fantasy is a gross understatement. This Christmas, while meandering through a garden center, I found adorable little pots of fresh rosemary sculpted into Christmas tree shapes. Since I also love fresh herbs, I snatched one up and  took it home, where it perched proudly it atop of my refrigerator, multitasking as Christmas decoration and culinary device.

Here it is.

 Quite the gardener I am. I grow my dried herbs right on the vine.

The second problem is that our small back lawn is mostly a piney Georgia stick forest. There is simply no spot of land back there sufficient to sun even a moderate garden.

So our solution is square foot gardening. Years ago, before we moved to this house, we (that would be mostly “he”) had real success with square foot gardens, and we intend to try again. So the husband spent a rainy Saturday turning the earth in various spots along the edge of the driveway and near the piney woods. Then he purchased the lumber for the frames, and he cut the wood, and he crafted the little boundaries. Today, he will haul barn dirt from my sister’s farm.

So far, my contribution has been to snap a picture. For some odd reason, he likes it that way.

Happy Gardening!