Today is not a one-bucket day. Waiting a full week to weed after the heat and rains of late July was maybe a mistake. I haul out the wheelbarrow and consider how I’m missing a date with friends and iced tea to tackle this. But the landscaper stops by tomorrow to check on my plants, and I aim to impress.
Sedges, he called them in his reply to the snapshots I sent. Tall grasses disguising themselves as the smaller grasses we paid to plant. I waited too long to pull them because I was deceived into thinking they were the real thing, or if not, they at least looked attractive. But how quickly they spread and now the landscape is all in a tangle.
I reach down with my bare arms and yank a handful out of the damp dirt. A few more yanks and my arms start feeling prickly. I decide it is only the heat and sharpness of tall grass and keep pulling. The prickly feeling spreads to a full-out burning itchy rash and pretty soon I’m racing inside, muddy flip-flops flapping, to scrub from shoulders to fingertips with soap and water.
I begrudgingly change into long sleeves, find purple gardening gloves, and trudge back out front.
I stand in the middle of the next patch to pull more deftly but soon am running to the backyard hose. I shiver as I spray icy water down my bare, itchy legs. The weeds are winning but I’m too hot—or stubborn—to go back inside and switch from shorts to pants. I am allergic to sedges. And maybe all weeds, if it would release me from the task.
I’m back in the thick of it once more, doing an awkward straddle over each patch so my skin won’t touch. My nails are caked with dirt and sweat runs down my neck. I think of those who modeled good gardening to me—my mom and grandma and my friend Pete—and I have new respect.
Three buckets and one wheelbarrow later I’ve finally liberated all the good grasses that were hidden. I can’t help but ponder the parable of the sower. These sedges have deceived me and choked out my good plants—just like in that story Jesus told.
Needing encouragement, I move to the vegetable garden. The potted tomatoes are slow and sparse this summer compared to the hundreds I harvested last year when they still lived in the garden bed. The cucumbers aren’t coping well in their pots either, forming only a few tiny fruits on floppy vines. But there are plenty of plump snap peas to pick and the basil is burgeoning—the first crop already packed into jars of pesto for pasta. I pull up a young carrot because I am curious. I have waited patiently for weeks to see what lies under these tall green fronds. The Burpee seed package was labeled “Kaleidoscope Blend”, and this one is crimson. I cradle it in awe and delight in the fact that maybe I do know how to garden.
How can a farmer not believe in God, I wonder? I can plant and water and protect from weeds, but I cannot give growth to a carrot. Especially one that is crimson.
As I work I compare my garden to my heart, just like in Jesus’ parable. Weeds and thorns sprout up so easily and I am deceived. Worries over appearance and desire for accomplishments threaten to strangle my identity in Christ.
“And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.” (Mark 4:18-19 ESV)
Here, this morning in my garden, I am renewed in my desire to weed out what chokes the word of God planted in my heart.
It is too valuable to be veiled. In it, I learn of the Creator of crimson carrots.
In it, I can bear much fruit.
I long for this.
“As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:15 ESV)
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