Gardening

For Family Home Evening this week, we planted our garden. The kids had a lot of fun digging in the dirt. They also enjoy helping pick out what we will plant. Our little garden isn't really big enough to provide us with enough produce to feed our family, but it provides the great opportunity to teach us several lessons.

For me, the biggest lesson the garden teaches me is perseverance. I do great at getting motivated in the spring to pick out some crops and plant them. I even enjoy doing this. But as the summer gets hotter and the weeds get more numerous, I lose interest in maintaining the garden. I need to learn to stick with it and do the work the whole summer!

For the kids, there are many lessons I hope they will learn from having a garden.

• Ye reap what ye sow. Looking at the package of peas, you see a picture of peas. You expect to get peas and not watermelon. This simple lesson is vitally important not just for gardens, but for life. When we plant the seeds of obedience, faith, and love, we reap the blessings that come with following the Lord. When we plant the seeds of disobedience and discord we reap disappointment, sorrow and heartache. I hope they learn this lesson young!



• Patience. We just planted our seeds Monday, and already Rebecca has had to check the garden for the young plants. Even though the seeds germinate in the short time of 8 days, patience is required to see the plants. In life, they need to understand that most good things do not come immediately. We must be patient as we wait for God's timetable to be evident.



• Perseverance. We need to keep up on the garden to harvest anything but weeds. In life, the children need to work through the challenges and enjoy the good times, waiting for their ultimate reward.



• Work. There is no such thing as a free lunch! To reap the benefits of the garden, we must do the work necessary to enjoy the fruits. If the work is done by others, we don't understand the true joy of the finished product.

Even though gardening isn't a passion in my life, we still plant one and try to enjoy the process of learning together through working the soil.