Eyes that see the good in things: July 30, 2018

“Happiness is not about getting what you want all the time. It’s about loving what you have and being grateful for it.” This message that my cousin posted on Facebook earlier this week really hit home for me, because I’d come to the same realization in my garden the weekend before.

Sometimes people need to keep re-learning the same lessons repeatedly. Unfortunately, I might be one of those people. Have you ever noticed how many magazine articles and books use gardening stories when the messages are about life and personal growth? But those kinds of messages work for me; I understand them. I’ve personally been drawn to these kinds of stories for as long as I can remember; I even talked about growing plants and gardens in my speech at my high school graduation. And that was a long time ago.

Although, I must confess that sometimes I wonder why those gardening parallels catch my attention. I know there are people who truly love tending their gardens, like my sister who really loves to play in the dirt and she spends most of her summer doing it. Of course, her yard is beautiful and mine is overgrown and weedy. I freely admit, gardening is not my most favorite thing to do, as my husband will certainly attest.

And if I’m being completely honest, I would admit that so far this year my time in the garden has been limited to planting. Yes, I know it’s almost August, and my husband has done all the weeding and watering by himself. In my defense, though, the golden grain fields around my house are telling me that his time in the garden will soon be coming to a screeching halt and mine will begin. The start of harvest means the garden will become mine, and I will become responsible for harvesting and food preservation.

Truthfully, I don’t know if I would even have a garden if it weren’t for our daughter. She likes to plant a garden at our house because she doesn’t have enough room in her yard to plant everything that she likes to plant. I like to have her come home, so I agree. She came home this weekend to work in the garden, but since someone else has been keeping the weeds under control, she and I were able to spend our time harvesting. There was an over-abundance of cucumbers, so she took a bag home with her, and we kept a bag. There were just a few ripe tomatoes, but the salad we made for supper with the garden tomatoes and cucumbers was amazing. He also picked enough raspberries to have raspberry sundaes for dessert.

Unfortunately, that zucchini should have been picked while we were gone on our little vacation. If you’ve ever grown zucchini before, you’ll understand that was not a good situation. Zucchini does not wait patiently to be picked and we had a few that looked more like watermelon than they did zucchini. As I walked through the garden and saw the MANY plants, I wondered aloud why we planted so many. My daughter admitted that was her fault. The package of seeds I had purchased was an assortment of different colors; yellow, dark green, a lighter green and an almost white. Because the seeds all looked the same, we had no way of knowing if we were planting an assortment or if they were all the same color. Apparently we planted the whole package, and we certainly have an assortment.

My daughter took most of them home with her and will shred some of the larger ones and freeze it to use in soups, chili, Italian sauces and meat loaf. She makes healthier things with hers than I do. The larger yellow ones I kept were because I saw a lemon zucchini bread recipe I wanted to try and bring to work. Unfortunately, I think it’s time to pick again.

I walked over to look at the new aronia berry bushes we planted this spring to see how they were growing. While I was over by the trees, I saw that the chokecherries were ripe and ready to pick, and the bushes were loaded with them. They were hanging in clusters of large, dark cherries and they covered the entire bush.

It had been years since we’d picked the chokecherries, but I knew my parents would love some chokecherry jelly and syrup and I know my daughter loves it too. We spent several hours sitting and picking chokecherries. Yes, you read that right. We moved the garden bench over in front of the bushes and for a long time, there were enough chokecherries low enough that we could just keep moving the bench further down the row and pick sitting down. Sitting and talking to my daughter that day as we filled our buckets with chokecherries was one of the most enjoyable days that I’ve had in a long time.

We were just getting to the point when we would have to stand to reach more when my husband came over and started pulling the branches down, so we could keep picking in comfort. Eventually we did have to stand up, but the chore I normally hate doing alone, had become a fun activity with the three of us talking and laughing together. I now have a gallon of juice, just waiting to be turned into jelly and syrup, and that’s my job for later today.

I came away from that day in the garden and the conversations with my daughter, with a renewed appreciation for this yard that I normally see as a never-ending source of work. She commented that she preferred to garden here where it was quiet, and that she loved listening to the birds sing. Conversation and laughter seem to flow easily in the garden as we work together and build memories. Sometimes it takes someone else to remind you about what you already have.

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