July Wanderings

Out at the end of our driveway, Linda has planted a garden where before there was only roots and hardscrabble ground. Looks pretty good, if I may say so. Anyway, I was watering the garden one morning last weekend while Linda was in Florida, when a woman who was out walking her dog passed by. She said, Your wife did a lovely job with the garden. I replied, Thank you. She helped me quite a bit. The woman hesitated before resuming her walk, but I heard her say under her breath, Your wife is the only one I ever saw working on it. Yes, some of our neighbors are busybodies.

The next day, I was out at the Glovers’ farm hoeing in our “Season of Faith” garden. I was using my new 2-prong/hoe with a telescoping, 34-inch handle (Lowes, $17.98) when John walked up, examined my work and said, So you actually can do a little farming. I did not like his attitude.

I ended up talking to my brother and complaining that my farming prowess has not been garnering the respect I feel I am due. I figured Dale would understand since he has completed all of the coursework and has received the title of “Master Gardener.” He keeps all of the Kansas family stocked throughout the summer with okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peppers, squash and such. Anyway, Dale says, You know, Gary, I hear that the federal government pays some farmers not to grow crops. His voice trailed off, Maybe you could get in on that. Third child – need I say more?

Well, disrespect aside, I think this Season of Faith garden is going to prove to be a blessing – to me, at least. After our Saturday planting session, Linda and I got away to the beach for a couple of days, but on our journey back to Wilson, we traveled on the back roads: NC-50 out of Holly Ridge, staying north on NC-41, then on to NC-111. There are a lot of farms along that stretch. It was near dusk, the end of the work day, and everything seemed quiet. Faint memories floated through my head of some days spent a half century ago at a farmhouse sitting on a couple hundred acres of land between Sherman and Van Alstyne, Texas. Rocking on a porch . . . burning the day’s trash . . . looking out on the fields as darkness fell. Pure nostalgia wrested from no more than a handful of days in my life.

The thing is this: City life has made us look at work in different ways. Something to be done . . . something necessary . . . productive even. But not always something to be embraced. Vacations have become about getting away . . . far away. And I cannot tell you how many of my friends and family members talk for years about retiring before they actually can pull the trigger. I know a barrel of folks, who when they were fifty-some-odd years old with a life expectancy of eighty-plus, could not let a day pass without talking about the day they would retire.

But there I was, standing with my co-workers in a plowed field with a hoe in my hands as darkness began to envelope me. The half dozen rows that we had worked were pretty with the darker, up-turned soil showing and the nut grass chopped out. I even allowed myself a few minutes to wonder and worry about whether it was going to rain. Someone said we even had a couple of peppers on the plants – eight days of a garden and we already had a harvest on our hands. God is good, I know, but that doesn’t even begin to say it properly.

So, I hope you get away for a few days this summer. Away from your work. But I also hope you get to spend a few evenings surveying what you have accomplished here: a mowed yard, a painted fence, a mighty barbeque . . . whatever. And I hope you can taste and see that life is good and work can be holy. And that God blesses all of it. Amen and amen.

And remember one more thing –
I can hoe with the best of them, and don’t you forget it, John Glover. 
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Blessings and Peace, 
Gary

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