The seeds

I have had a crop of sweet corn produce ears no larger than my little finger. Sweet Potatoes no bigger than my thumb. I have watched packets of carrot seeds be carried away by ants and 8 successive plantings of tomatoes wilt before my eyes. 4 packs of peas have produced 8 pea pods and a dozen children have been disappointed by their first taste of a hard bitter radish that they planted.

Five months – no eggplants, no sizable onions, miniature squash, and rotten melons. Packs of seeds generously donated from foreign friends, and planted by me with the best of intentions. All the while I have watched wild yams grow the size of trees, oranges, avocados, and mangos fall off trees faster than we can give them away, pineapple tops sprout on kitchen counters, green beans grow taller then Lucy, cucumbers take over my refrigerator, and the dead sticks I place in my garden for space markers sprout to life in two days.

I have learned the word “carne de perro” - which means “meat of a dog” - or “you can't kill it.” “No serve” - it won't work - and “pega bien” - it will stick good – are some of the most common phrases in my vocabulary. I have received age old wisdom about planting according to the phase of the moon, intermixed with such boggas advice as, “That tomato died because too many women on their period walked by,” to the point that some days I can't tell the difference. The variables in rain, heat, quality of soil, age of seeds, pests, fungus, and pestering animals would take a lifetime to master. But my neighbors don't have a lifetime to experiment – if what they plant doesn't grow – they don't eat. So they plant corn, rice, and beans. And the soil depletes and they burn off some more forest, and their diet is unbalanced and they never know the difference. They don't own the land so they won't plant fruit trees to invest in their future. They have never eaten some foods like okra and New Zealand spinach that grow like gang busters so they by 1 limp bags of chips and frozen koolade.

Isaiah 17:10-11 Why? Because you have turned from the God who can save you.
You have forgotten the Rock who can hide you.
So you may plant the finest grapevines and import the most expensive seedlings.
They may sprout on the day you set them out; yes, they may blossom on the very morning you plant them, but you will never pick any grapes from them.
Your only harvest will be a load of grief and unrelieved pain.

And I ran across Isaiah. Verses filled with gardening imagery. Verses ringing true about plants and humans. Nothing can grow without His grace and wisdom. The best of all foreign seeds wilt without His blessing. All the work and labor to produce what we WANT is in vain in the face of his ordering the universe to the contrary. And so we plant in our lives what we think we want. What we see someone else has – that looks so good- that grows so well for them. And then we toil to see it produce nothing – to leave us empty and wanting. The foreign seed has failed us because we looked to it for provision instead of to the one who created the climate of our lives within which we sow. We never ask Him what he would have us plant in the garden of our lives.

Isaiah 28:24-29
When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?
Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?
When he has leveled the surface,
does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin?
Does he not plant wheat in its place, [d]
barley in its plot, [e]
and spelt in its field?
His God instructs him
and teaches him the right way.
Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cummin with a stick.
Grain must be ground to make bread;
so one does not go on threshing it forever.
Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it,
his horses do not grind it.
All this also comes from the LORD Almighty,
wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.

And Isaiah again speaks of our lives as seeds. That we may take comfort that the one who created us knows where we will grow and how we must be handled. How often I have thought my soil too dry or my threshing too hard – but He alone knew that I would rot with moisture and remain useless unless cleaned. He made us exactly the way we are, to inhabit a different climate than our neighbor... and we spend so much time as cucumbers wishing we were lettuce. Do I think that the soil that he plants me in next will be worse for me than the soils of Urraco? From the greenhouse to a garden I go.

But do I regret these plantings? These failures? Not one seed. I have gained more wisdom than food, and my little friends and I have learned more lessons in tenacity. I have shared the few things that have worked with neighbors, and they have shared with me. We have laughed at failures and eaten new and different meals together. And I have heard that there is a cherry tomato in the jungle that grows like a weed. I will find it, I will transplant it before I am transplanted in his perfect timing.


Walking through the gardens to our house:


PLaying in the sugar cane and yucca..... please note the little gun Jude has holstered in his pants. *sigh*



Speaking of seeds..... they don't fall far from the tree

Lucy

Jarod