“enough for what I need. . .”
There’s a chill in the air in the mornings now, as we go deeper into September. And though I have not been able to have a garden in years, this time in early fall always brings to mind, for me, that last session of weeding, before pulling up the last of the harvest, the last few weeks of a farmer’s market, filled with squash and gourds, and soon, pumpkins. There’s something about growing food for your own table, or meeting the person who grew it for you.
From Rev. Max Coots, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York:
Gratitude for the Garden
by Rev. Max Coots
I am finished with my garden for the year—almost. Oh, I’m still playing that game of hide-and-seek with the inevitable frost. Every night, when the temperature counts down to begin the game, I do run out to help the last tomatoes hide.
It was a good year, more or less—more for the snow peas than for the corn, less for the spinach, more for the rest. The turnips were immense, like spheres of opulence, though the radishes went more to maggots than to me. My potatoes remind me of that old country quip: “How’d your padadas do?” “So-so. I got some the size a beans, I got some the size a peas, and then I got a lotta little ones.”
But it was a good year, more or less. Most everything that missed the drought, overcame the weeds, and survived the bugs got home safe enough. From time to time I can go to the freezer and the shelf of jars in my cellar and count my canned contentment. The harvest will be an attitude, not a time of year. And maybe I’ll be wise enough to feel a sort of litany of gratitude:
For seeds—that, like memories and minds, keep in themselves the recollection of what they were and the power to become something more than they are….For soil—that accumulation of lives piled up by death that gives new life….
For the justice of the earth—that gave me about as many weeds and wilt and scab and bugs as vegetables but, in the end, gave me enough for what I need….
For hands—those miracles on the ends of my arms that let me tend my vegetables and pull my weeds, and for mind enough to know the difference between the two….
For calluses—life’s defense against that softness that makes survival difficult….
For the ability to work and the will to work and the work to do, and the time to do it in….
And, finally, for that sense of kinship to it all, that singleness, that unity that is the basis of faith….
If I do that, my litany will be something like a prayer.
Source: Gratitude for the Garden, by Rev. Max Coots, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York, as published in the September 2005 edition of Quest, the monthly newsletter from the Church of the Larger Fellowship
Tags: CLF, gardening, gratitude, Max Coots, nature, unity
