Want what you have

The garden grows and is becoming what it is and not what it was.

Memories of last year’s abundance and worries that this year’s crop will not be a bountiful are moving into the background. Now I watch the broccoli, the cabbage, the Brussels sprouts grow lushly with the moist warm climate. The tomatoes start to fill the cages and even if the varieties are not quite the same as last year, I am gaining confidence that there will a crop that I will dehydrate and use throughout the year.

The garden is an example of a continuous giving. Even as we harvest fresh green onions, cilantro, parley, Swiss chard, and spinach, the freezer and the pantry shelves provide grated yellow squash, tomato sauce, blackened peppers and pickles.

David Wolf speaks of reincarnation at the Fellowship this past Sunday and speaks of scientist Ian Stephenson’s documentation of 2,500 children who could recall all sorts of details that they could not possibly know unless they had a past live. He says that those children, between the ages of two and five, become more firmly rooted in their present life and forget the details that they knew when they were younger.

It is the concept that I remember with my garden now, as it becomes itself and not what it was before.

Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church gives the simple advice in dealing with uncertain times “want what you have.”

To that I add, let things, people and gardens, be what they are. Take care of them and discover their individual uniqueness. And in that process, I believe that we will find blessings and harvests to appreciate.