Getting Started

Starting a garden from scratch isn't easy. This was our first year of having a vegetable garden that isn't just in pots. We started by using a rototiller to dig up a 10x15 foot patch of grass in a sunny part of the yard. Even after we tilled the dirt, there were still huge clods of grass to pull out. (I tried putting some over dirt patches in the yard, but I'm not sure they took.) We used a garden weasel to work the dirt further. The great thing about the weasel is that it not only breaks up the clods, it also catches the grass & roots, to a certain degree, so you can pull them out of the garden. I added top soil and sort of stirred the dirt around with a pitchfork. Tough work. Once all of this was accomplished I could start planting. There's still grass coming up though, so I have to get in there and weed it out. Nature abhors a vacuum; any empty dirt will grow weeds.

All of this is symbolic for my spiritual life. When we lost Liam, it was like God took what seemed like a perfectly good idea and tore it to pieces. There was nothing inherently wrong with Hubs and me having a child. We're financially stable, our relationship is stable, it's something we both want. For some reason it was not part of God's plan for Liam to stay with us on earth beyond 5 short months. And similarly there was nothing wrong with the patch of grass we rototilled into a garden. It was nice grass, green and growing. But I can see the whole plan. I can see that in order to have a garden and grow vegetables the way I want to grow them, I had to destroy all that nice grass. That's what keeps me going: I believe that God has a plan greater than what I can see. I believe that at some point in my life my family will grow, and I'm not letting go of that belief until God tells me to let go.