The weather is starting to warm up. The sun us starting to shine a little more, and rises earlier every morning. Seedlings are sprouting in the garden, swallows are coming home to nest... yes, spring is finally here!
And so are the Autumn Feasts!
It feels strange to be celebrating Autumn Feasts here in the Southern Hemisphere when it's supposed to be spring, doesn't it? But just as every plant and animal around us is getting excited for warmer weather, I'm quite sure all of us are excited to get feasting! With Rosh Hashana behind us, and Yom Kippur and Sukkot ahead of us, we've only just started!
I also happen to know that spring brings a bunch of weeds in tow. Just when all the lovely vegetables and herbs start flourishing, the weeds try to choke the good plants and take over the stage. I don't know if it's just my garden, but every spring the weeds seem to double their will to grow and to multiply. For your own sake (and for your fingernails') I hope your garden is more well behaved than mine!
I don't know if it's just me, but sometimes I feel as if I'm the garden and the weeds always want to start flourishing when I feel like I'm starting to do something good. Just when I plant two kindness seeds, the weeds suddenly want to create a swamp and drown any blade the little plant might try to squeeze out from the soil. And before I know it, the ground I had cleared and the seeds I had watered have been replaced by weeds, and the unwelcome weeds grin up at me in triumph.
*lets out an enormous sigh*
A few years ago, my wise, amazing mother taught us that our hearts are like a garden, filled with good vegetables and fruit, always growing and learning. Weeds will come, trying to take over our little garden, and it's our job to weed them out and replace them with good plants. Sometimes there are big, thorny monstrous weeds that are better taken out with a hoe and lots of force. Our parents are the helpers tending our gardens, helping us to weed out the bad guys when they come around and try take up residence. I must state here and now that if it isn't for all the hard work my parents have put in to help me cultivate the good, my garden would have been in a terrible state of wreckage by now. I am forever thankful to God for giving me such wise, caring parents.
I know in my herb garden, I have this one patch of ground with almost nothing planted in it. It has the best soil in comparison to my other full garden beds. But over the time I've had my herb garden, I've never taken the effort to plant anything in it. It's been the garden bed I've just kind of ignored, hoping it would somehow get itself in order and make itself useful.
But even with the best soil, the best position, the best, well, everything - the good plants never came. Instead, it always made HUGE crops of weeds. Of every kind. Before I could blink, my best garden bed would become a miniature version of the Amazon jungle. There's nothing to stop the weeds. Whenever I would weed, I'd leave that bed until last. I hardly had any weeds worth mentioning in any of my other herb filled garden beds. Of course, some didn't have quite as many herbs as others, and the beds with the least amount of herbs always had more weeds, but - that so called empty bed truly can be what nightmares are made of.
And by the time I finish weeding the other garden beds, I'd abandon ship and leave the Amazon jungle to grow some more.
For some weird reason weeds love good soil. The best soil, generally. They want the good soil all to themselves. Quite selfish, if you ask me. But then again, if I were a weed, I probably wouldn't settle for second best, either...
Ahem. Back to the weeds growing in a herb garden. When I do have the courage to weed it, I have to tackle it with every drop of merciless destruction I can muster. When I finally pull the last weed from the stolen soil, I look back over the now-clear brown highway for herbies. A tap on the shoulder from a mud-stained hand. The enemy has been conquered. Now, let's head inside and celebrate with a well earned ice-cream, don't you think?
But the weeds always come back more ferociously than before. I always let them grow longer between each weedy-clean. The unkept appearance and wasted space I see whenever I look out the window is annoying. Yet, I never seem to learn the secret of keeping a clean garden. Sometimes, weeding just isn't the answer at all.
Maybe - just maybe - weeds aren't such a bad thing after all.
I must admit that I do prefer sage and lavender above a stinging nettle, but maybe God is using this particular, um, drama, shall we say, to try and teach me something about my own garden in my heart. I know it feels strange, but let's take a look at our determined little weedy friends and see if we can learn anything from them. There are quite a few of them, anyway, and I do need to pull them out...
Firstly, I have noticed without much investigation that they tend to favour the best soil. The very soil that can be used for growing the best herbs or whatever useful plant and the very soil with the best possibilities of creating the best crop and the best yield. They always choose the soil with the best potential first. Secondly, they always try to find a spot without anything else growing nearby. Well, I guess that's not always true, if I look at how one nasty weed enjoys coming up between my thyme plants, using the thyme to shield himself until he can overpower poor thyme and take over that part of the garden. But he still plays mean and he's a coward in reality - he either steals from the good plants, takes his place a safe distance away, or pretends he's their friend until the day comes when he slowly chokes them. Generally speaking, though, our weed friends will almost always start their own colonies in soil where there isn't anything planted right beside them.
I learned something interesting from an elderly man we lived with, several years ago. My family lived on the same property as they did, and one day I was helping him prepare the vegetable garden for spring planting. There were a lot of weeds to pull out. I noticed he kept pulling out the weeds, breaking off the roots, and then placing them back onto the freshly weeded patch of ground.
He explained in his quiet, gentle way that weeds are very efficient in taking nutrients from the soil and then storing them inside their leaves. Even though weeds aren't good when they're growing, if we get rid of the roots they can actually benefit the soil as they decompose, thereby strengthening the plants planted in their place. If we throw the whole weed away, we lose something that could benefit the good plant we plant in it's place. At the time, I didn't understand and kept throwing the entire weed to the chickens, but now, for the first time, I'm starting to understand something I think God was trying to teach me, not necessarily how to weed properly, but something much deeper. Sometimes we think the only way to be completely good, fix all our problems and erase shame because of the weeds in our gardens, is by completely getting rid of the weed. All those mistakes we make, all those things we do wrong - we will only be able to get it right if we completely destroy the weed causing us to do it.
In a way, that's true. We need to take out the harmful plants in our gardens in order to make space for the good ones. Our good plants will grow just fine. But what about those experiences we harvested from the weed itself? What about all the things we learned, even as the weed only grew bigger and stronger? These experiences are so valuable to us as we grow the good instead of the bad. Even though the actual bad from the weed decomposes into the soil, it leaves behind the experiences, knowledge, and learning it carried up from the good soil it grew in, giving the new little plant everything it needs to go forward armed, instead of throwing out everything into the weed bucket, and not learning from the experience itself. We can throw away the root of the weed. But perhaps the experience they channelled into the plant, although it was intended to make the weed grow, can be used instead to make the strawberry or the cucumber grow into fullness.
And even if it was fully discarded and thrown to the chickens, eventually the compost will come back into the vegetable garden, although it will take a season before it get's back to the garden. And it will be rich in all the minerals and vitamins the little plant needs!
Weeds will always try to choke the good plants, if there's nowhere else for them to go. But I guess that just comes to show you that there truly is something good planted in that garden bed, and not to give up growing the good. Even if you don't manage to pull out all the weeds, if you keep growing the good, they will eventually choke out the weeds.
Gardens were never created to be perfect either, I think as I wrestle with a particularly determined thistle. Living in a commercial farming community has helped me see some of the not so good effects it has on the soil and ecosystem around it. These hundreds of acres gardens are usually only filled with one type of plant. There is no diversity. One for all and all for one, literally. Every single plant looks the same, tastes the same, smells the same. They're solemn as they sway in the spring breeze. Like soldiers only there to fulfil their short duty, they stand in straight lines without smiling. There are no weeds in their territory. Their soil is like clay, flooding at the first hint of rain. Their soil doesn't contain the minerals these stem-necked soldiers need to fulfil their duty. They need all sorts of 'fertilizers', constantly tweaked and changed, just to live. And when their fruit is finally harvested and used to feed the masses, they only aid in making those who partake of their fruit ill.
This strategy certainly isn't sustainable. It reminds me of the world today. The masses are all trying to be the same. To fit in. To have perfect lives, without those annoying weeds to battle all the time. They run on the latest movies and fashions, gossips, and more. Without all these things, they whither and fall flat. They aren't even any help to their neighbours around them. They can't build up those around them with the good fruit.
So, being entirely weed-free isn't a very good thing, either. Diversity seems to be necessary, too.
Just like my herb garden, my heart's garden is far from perfect. It's full of weeds that sometimes feel like they're choking me. Sometimes I get lost in the weed-filled Amazon jungle and think I don't even have a good garden left. And even though I occasionally manage to wipe old Amazon off from the face of the good soil, the weeds just come back.
Weeding is tiring work. Especially when the weeds just keep coming back. But maybe, if I just take the good advise this garden bed is trying to give me, things will get better.
Perhaps I should start replacing the weeds with something good. Just a little bit of kindness. Just a little bit of love. Maybe I should pick a spot in the garden bed, plant one little plant, and just work on letting it grow. And then pick another corner and plant another herb and get it growing. Maybe it's time to stop thinking of the weeds and start thinking of the herbs. Despite my best intentions, I tend to forget them and only focus on the weeds.
Maybe, just maybe, instead of being mad at the weeds and just trying to keep the herbs alive by pulling out the weeds, it's time to start taking over the weed-infested pockets by planting rosemary. Or chamomile. Definitely chamomile.
Weeds are naturally going to grow where there's something good. They won't grow where there's something bad. If you have weeds in your garden, rejoice, my friend! It's hard, I know. Don't lose heart - if weeds are trying to grow there, there's something good in that soil! Just don't let the weeds spoil a good opportunity for a jungle of lemon balm and clary sage. Lemon balm grows and multiplies wonderfully, by the way. Just saying.
Let Abba water you with His Spirit. Let His Word strengthen you from your roots up to your leaves. And smile up at His love shining down on you strongly yet with tenderness from above.
I wish you all happy gardening during these Days of Awe. Sometimes these days leading up to Yom Kippur can be a bit intense and guilt-filled. They don't need to be - remember the Master Gardener is right here with you, helping you grow into fullness with plenty of Fruit of the Spirit to share. Everyone of us is different and special in our own way. Don't try to be like a commercial field. That's a boring life, if you ask me.
Shabbat Shalom!
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