How Does Your Garden Grow?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I come from a long line of gardeners and every summer, I plant my favorite vegetables and flowers in a small patch in my yard. I get a lot of pleasure from my zucchinis; tomatoes, eggplant, asparagus and herbs, but I also get a lot of work.

Gardening is more than browsing seed catalogs and harvesting fresh veggies.  First the earth must be turned and fertilized. Then, the beds must be prepared and the seedlings planted. Seedlings must be watered and watched for pests. Rabbits and groundhogs consider gardens fast food markets. Slugs and other crawling things are always waiting to invade. But it is weeds that really wear me out.

Weeds get my goat.  I spend many an hour pulling them and I have been known to, let’s say, lecture them -- oh, all right, shout at them. What right do they have to grow in my carefully tended garden? Why are you taking water and nourishment from my plants? This is my dirt. Go find somewhere else to grow!  I work hard at it and do a pretty good job of keeping them out. The perimeter of my garden, the showy part, is spotless, or should I say, weedless.  It’s the interior that gives the greater challenge.

In the spring, it’s sometimes hard to tell the weeds from the seedlings. As the plants grow, it gets harder and harder to reach in among the greenery and pull out the sneaky weeds that are camouflaged within. It is especially hard around asparagus. 

After harvesting the spring growth of asparagus, the plants must be allowed to grow the beautiful ferns that will feed the roots during the summer. Asparagus is a great crop, plant the roots and harvest sprouts for about fifteen years.  But letting the ferns grow while trying to keep the weeds out is tricky business. It’s a jungle in there. So I put on my armor, my long sleeves, long pants and hat, and crawl on in.

Some people, notably those who do not take weeds as a personal affront (and those who do not want to be recruited to help weed), have suggested that I just let the weeds grow up with the asparagus. Keep the outside weedless and forget about the sweaty labor of crawling under the ferns. The flowers surrounding the garden look lovely, and the immediate inner garden looks great. Why fuss?

Well, I fuss and I crawl right in. I get ferns in my hair and fern dust on my face but I also reap a great asparagus harvest every April, May and June.

So what does all this have to do with parenting? Children are like a garden. We plant them, we tend them, and we watch them grow. And they are hard work.  Keeping the outside of a child, the showy part, looking good is difficult enough. Changing diapers, clipping fingernails and washing behind ears are tough.

I see a lot of kids with the latest hairdos, fashionable clothes and trendy sneakers. These kids look like beautiful flowers. But what’s going on in the inside of these pretty blossoms? What weeds are creeping in to strangle their roots? What values are your children learning?  Where are they getting these values? Are the weeds of popular culture, TV, movies and videos taking over the good soil? Are they keeping your child from getting the full nourishment needed? What are you doing to keep the weeds out?  What values are you putting in?

So tend your children the way I tend my garden. Keep the outside looking good, but don’t neglect the inside. Crawl in and pull out the weeds. Decide what values you want your children to have, teach them, and work hard to give them room to grow.  It might be messy work, but you’ll reap a wonderful harvest.