In Gratitude for Fathers and Gardening

I am not a gardener. When I look out my back window at the weeds growing in the garden bed and the landscape rocks, I rationalize why I don’t need to go out and yank them up by the roots. I make plans to buy something that will kill the weeds, but even if I remember the purchase, I hardly ever find the time to apply the weed killer.

Every spring I buy some annuals and plant them in my small front garden and in some flower boxes. This is the extent of my gardening ability, and I usually do it grudgingly and as quickly as possible. I don’t like digging in the dirt and it doesn’t in any way make me feel any gratitude or reverence for God’s creation.

This year was different. For some reason I enjoyed digging in the dirt. I found myself relishing breaking apart the clods of dirt in the flower boxes and raking loose the hard black dirt in the raised garden. I don’t know what was different—if I was grateful to finally have a day that was warm enough to do some planting, if it was that I was overloaded on cerebral pursuits and enjoyed the opportunity to do something relatively mindless. Whatever the case, I dug and scraped and weeded and planted and took my sweet time with the good earth.

My father grew up on a farm. When he married and moved into his own home, he "farmed" the land in our suburban backyard. Because he was a school teacher he had the summers free to plant and tend and water and weed and "putter." He even kept bees so his plants would properly pollinate. He used to say, “You can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.”

He doesn’t farm any more. He lives in a condominium and even his indoor plants have died as he has forgotten to tend to them. I wonder if part of my gardening "bug" came from the realization that if the family tradition is to continue, I need to pick up the mantel of the farmer.

With Father’s Day recently passing, take time to give thanks for those who have had a positive fathering influence on your life. Maybe even take some time this weekend to "pick up the mantel" of the one(s) who has (have) been a father for you and give thanks for your inheritance.