In which I Detail The Emotional Rollercoaster of Tending to my Garden...

Presented to you below is a cycle of emotions I've noticed in my gardening experience over the course of my gardening career; I'm curious if anyone can relate.  Here is the sequence:

1) End of winter: "OH, boy, oh, boy; I'm a farmer, I'm a gardener! Can't wait to get my garden in!"

2) Spring: "Planting is really fun, I'm a gardener!"

3) Mid Spring: "Weeding sucks! I don't know about this gardening stuff"

4) Late Spring: "Watering and forever weeding really sucks!  I kinda don't think this gardening stuff is worth it!"

5) Early Summer: "Perpetually watering and forever weeding REALLY sucks; those 3 okra I've brought in so far are sooo not worth it.  I am NOT doing this again next year.  I've got so many better things to do with my time."

6) Mid Summer (the first time I have to use both hands to bring in the produce): "OH, boy, oh, boy; I'm a farmer, I'm a gardener! Can't wait to get my garden in next year!"  For me, that was yesterday.  I love to have a bountiful harvest; too much ain't enough.

The Old Guy (as we call him; my dad, a real farmer, and old and wise to boot) told me during this year's wheat harvest that often, the most important thing to most farmers is "production" and they can easily lose track of "profits".  I didn't ask; I only thought about it in retrospect, but took that to mean that the answer to "did you have a good year" usually lies in how much was produced, regardless of how much money was made or how much was spent on fuel and fertilizer.  In other words, sometimes you can lose track of why you are doing what you are doing. 

I see this in myself, but it is so much less painful to use my kids as an example. I tasked my younger daughter to clean off the concrete slab with the water hose.  After watching her aimlessly spray for a while, I asked her what it was she was doing.  Her response was "you told me to spray this concrete."  I then clarified to her that she was supposed to be cleaning the concrete; spraying it was only a tool in order to achieve the end result.  

"Oh...

Yeah... 

That is different."

Of course the implications are enormous in my own life; it got me to thinking about how much I do just because its "what I do" or its "how I do it," or even more unfortunate, the reason for doing things pivots on how I was feeling at the moment.

As we sow, so shall we reap.  True enough, but in most gardens, it involves so much more than sowing in order to reap; sowing is the fun part, the flashy part, but its by far the least of it.  Its the tending that really matters in the gardens I am hoping to enjoy the fruits of; the ones growing inside my house.  Right now it seems we have a lot of watering and weeding going on in our little gardens.

My desire then, is to be more focused on the end goal, the reward, less on my immediate circumstances. In doing so, I'm hoping that the perpetual watering and the forever weeding can become less of a burden, and more of a tool we have available to us in order to achieve our harvest. As a gardener, yes.  But more as a believer and follower of God, as a Parent, yes, and last but not least, as the Privileged, Exclusive and Rightful Lover of "Herself".