Getting Dirty

So, since moving in here in Logan Square, I've started gardening.  It's been a little bit of a project, since I do not, in fact, have any green space.  This was not necessarily what I'd been hoping for in a living space, but at least there is ample space and sun for the next best thing - a container garden.

It didn't take too long to get set up; Colleen and I made a trip to Home Depot and got five planting pots, a bunch of soil, two tomato plants (Earl Girl and Beefsteak), a red bell pepper plant, a banana pepper plant, and some cucumber plants.  Within a few hours, they were planted, watered, and left to grow in the hot Chicago summer sun.

And...grow they have.  I'm just now starting to get my first fruits of the season, some six weeks or so after planting, but I've got two tomatoes starting up, have already had two banana peppers with some blossoms back on the plant now, some promising bell pepper blossoms, and a cucumber on the vine.  I've even added on an indoor herb garden in my bay window, giving me lots of fresh basil, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and sage...I've had a bumper crop of sage this year.  It's exciting, watching these green, growing things do what God created them to do - grow, thrive, bear fruit.

In the midst of all this, I've been finding myself fall more and more in love with tending to green, growing things.  There's nothing quite like taking care of a garden, no matter how small.  It reaches deep in to who I am, roots me back into the rich soil out of God creates us in Genesis, restores me to the original work to which God called humans in the beginning.  

The sensory appeal of all of it, too - the cool, gritty feel of dirt on my hands, the smell of tomato leaves, the sound of wind rustling through the pepper plants and of water soaking into soil, the vibrant colors of green leaves and yellow blossoms, and (eventually) the incomparable taste of food fresh from the garden.  It's spiritual; I feel as fed as a child of God in my faith from working the soil (even in my pots) as my stomach will feel when those tomatoes ripen on the vine and become the first caprese salad of the season.

In all of this, I re-discovered a song that I'd had stuck in my head while on a tour of coal country in central Illinois back in April (another entry on this is forthcoming).  The protagonist in the song is just a poor farm kid who's always got the red clay of his work on the land all over him.  So, he wonders - "But when I pass through the pearly gates, will my gown be gold instead?  Or just a red clay robe with red clay wings and a red clay halo for my head?"  I sure hope so.  I sure hope eternity is marked with the red clay and black topsoil out of which we have come, and that things will be like in the beginning - all of us, working in God's garden, tending the beautiful land which God made and entrusts to us.