The Faithful, Unorganized Gardener

I read somewhere that the best time to be a gardener is January, leafing through seed catalogs and gardening books, imagining the large garden that will magically sprout up this summer.

This is currently my "garden:"

It's a big pile of wet clay-y dirt (yes dirt, it's going to need some more love before it becomes soil). The idea that it could transform and grow something we might eat or otherwise enjoy is magic, or faith, or some of both. Mostly hard work that has yet to happen. A lot of weeding is going to happen this weekend.

I though I'd have cool weather crops in by now and I'm feeling shamed by the gardeners I follow who have peas and radishes coming up already. But we had that late snow and this is my first year in this garden, so I probably need to cool it and give myself a break.

I also thought I'd have some beautifully organized seedlings growing. This is what's currently happening in my basement:

I don't know what most of those seeds are, because I wrote down which row had what but then promptly moved them a few weeks later and forgot. Thankfully I've already gotten toothpick flags made up for my tomatoes, which have not been planted yet, yes I'm behind there as well. 

I'm so bad at keeping up with my gardening plans, but as they say, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. The effort of growing things is never in vain. This is my second or third- fourth? year having a little garden of my own. Back in 2010 when I moved home to my parent's house in Wisconsin, my Dad and I were left our own devices at the garden center and came home with a Concord Grape plant. "It won't even produce fruit for a couple years!" my Mom exclaimed. "Then we better get it in now," we replied, grinning. The fruit of that grape plant has hung heavy on the vine for the past couple summers, and it shades an old bench in the back of my Mom's garden. (I hope they're bringing that bench to Tennessee, now that I think about it...) That's why I'll plant berry canes this year. That's why I'll dig in my clay-y plot, and build another raised bed, and scheme planting a couple fruit trees and throw kitchen scraps in the compost that might be ready in the fall. I'm not the first person to compare gardening to faith, but there's a reason it's a common comparison: it's a lesson in patience. A lesson in persistence even when you don't see immediate results. Lessons in seasons of life. Lessons in the small daily work of weeding and watering your garden and your heart. And lessons in small, unexpected spots of beauty.