5 Minute Friday: Garden

Today's word:  Garden

Ready, start.

When I was a little kid I spent a lot of time in my Mammaw's garden.  She grew about a a quarter acre garden of green beans, tomatoes, squash, and corn.  Everything she grew she cooked with or we ate raw on white bread with mayonnaise.

Those were the days.

I never minded going to the garden.  But I didn't particularly love it.

Fast Forward a good fifteen years and you'll see me in a lot of gardens.  Friend's grew gardens and I helped plant them.  I grew gardens in buckets on a porch in the city.  I graded tomatoes and peaches at the farmer's market.

Fast Forward ten years and see me longing for a garden.  Now a garden is sensible and economical and memories being brought back to life.  Gardening is simply a time to sow what is good and practice care and patience.  Gardening is getting closer to nature and therefore closer to God.

Gardening becomes more than dirt and seed.  It becomes promise....promise of warmer days and goodness growing.

Gardening becomes maintaining the soul.  Seeing every important virtue become part of your daily life.

1.  Patience
2.  Care
3.  Tenderness
4.  Joy
5.  Faith

Yes, that's what gardening can render on your life.  Oh what your life will render when you practice.