Time Began in a Garden

So I've been reading this book, Serve God Save the Planet, given to me by a very good friend of mine who is my environmental role model. Its premise is that environmental stewardship is a Christian mandate--if we love God, we love God's creation, and we love God's children living in that creation; and we show our love through transforming our over-consuming, waste-producing lifestyle into one focused on simplicity, creation care, and valuing the spiritual over the material. It's great, you should read it--check it out at your local library, the author is Dr. Matthew Sleeth.

Anyway, I read a passage* in it the other day that jumpstarted my dormant (no pun intended) project to adopt a community garden plot and grow a vegetable garden. My friend KC and I had enthusiastically hatched this plan in January; I had even emailed Felder Rushing, the host of Mississippi Public Broadcasting's The Gestalte Gardener radio show, to ask for advice for a novice gardener--check out the link in the title above; he featured my questions on his show! (I should note that I had a very small garden in our side yard for a few years in junior high, which I grotesquely de-slugged using a salt shaker; but that's about the extent of my gardening expertise, though my love for garden veggies and flowers is abundant).

I had lamented to Mr. Rushing that I knew next to nothing about what to plant, or when to plant it, in this climate; I also confessed that I was itching to start gardening NOW, since we've had several high 60s-mid70s days last month & this month. He replied with a long list of delicious veggies suitable for South Mississippi (though he unfortunately had to ix-nay my rhubarb dreams) and a garden prep checklist to keep me occupied until Good Friday, the traditional "last freeze" date for Gulf Coast planting. (1. Good Friday's calendar date varies widely each year, as does the date of the last frost [thanks, Dad, for that one], so I'm not quite sure how this rule of thumb works; and 2., how amazing is it to be able to plant in March??? Instead of mid-May like up North!!)

So a few Sundays ago, I bought a sack of gardening lime, borrowed a shovel, and went to stake my claim on a plot at the local park. Turns out on Sundays no one is gardening, but lots of people are playing basketball, smoking weed, and cruising lime-green hydraulic-jacked Skittles cars with chromey wheel rims past the park/local drug dealer hangout. Ahhh, I love my community.

I spent about an hour turning over the soil and adding lime to it to change the pH (technically I should've measured the pH first but I didn't have any litmus tape on me, so I just sort of....guesstimated. My high school biology teacher is rolling over in his pocket-protected lab coat).
Digging into the flat gray soil, turning it to expose its dark, rich, iron-streaked underbelly; singing a few snatches of Bernstein's "Sing God a Simple Song" against the backbeat of bass-thumping rap music; feeling the breeze lick across my warm muscles, a reminder of the exquisite grace of a cool wind during marathon training last year...I sweat and bled, bright ruby drops consecrating the soil I will till for the next several months. Pragmatic, concrete hard work mingling with the minor miracles of seed germination and growth to produce a divine synergy, bestowing a blessing on the hands that labor for it, the bodies that are nourished by it, and the community it beautifies...Creation balanced in perfect miniature.

Mine is the top plot:


I can't wait for this Sunday, when I'll mix in some organic compost and get a chance to spend a little time makin' magic with the angels of Eden. After all, time began in a garden. :)

*"It was a perfect day, a day that defies the rules of grammar--it was 'more perfect' than all the days before it. We were putting some parts of the garden to rest, while in another section we harvested carrots and potatoes. Late in the day we sat together to weed the strawberry patch. A feeling of joy and peace overcame me. I felt close to God. I experienced 'the peace that passes all understanding.' ...We were doing what our Maker created us to do." SGSTP, p. 134