.......that gardening is not a pastime. It is a way of life.

So seeing as how the condo board that governs the small-ish complex we currently call home has restrictions on bird feeders, wind chimes and potted plants my husband and I decided to take advantage of a community garden program we have in our town. And to satisfy our agricultural longings that way. For a fairly small fee we rented a 12x25 plot of tilled dirt just outside of the city limits. And for the most part it is ours to do with as we please.

No restrictions. No nosy neighbors complaining. No official letterhead notices from any condo boards.

Just before Memorial day weekend we prepped the soil and put in our seeds. During the following weeks of warmer weather we planted seedlings we had started in egg cartons in our dining room.

I felt oddly maternal about those seedlings. After nursing their very existence out of small contained cupfuls of dark, rich potting soil, watering them in our sink with the fine mist of our faucet sprayer, moving them from sunny window to sunny window through out the course of every afternoon, how could I not. It was disconcerting to merely plunk them down into coarse, grainy dirt, in the middle of an otherwise bleak and barren garden and drive away. I knew it was where they belonged but abandoning them to the wilds of the outdoors left me feeling more than a little anxious.

In the end, they did just fine. Surviving hail and hundred mile an hour winds, scorching heat and grazing deer served to toughen them up; toughen the whole garden up; toughen me up, as a matter of fact.

"Nature neither gives nor expects mercy," I read, in a gardening book, just hours before a stellar storm swept through our area and blew rain and trees and anything not nailed down sideways.

"Forget winning and cultivate delight," I read, in the same book, after seeing the damage done in a mere two days by a rather determined swarm of cucumber beetles.

To garden, in many ways, is to attempt order out of chaos; to conjure something out of nothing. It's a kind of biological alchemy in which you combine the humblest and most abundant of nature's components, water, dirt, sun and oxygen, throw in some sweat for good measure and hope for the best.

How hard can it be, you rather naively kid yourself in the beginning. Everywhere you look, things grow. Weeds in sidewalk cracks. Dandelions in otherwise pristine acres of uninterrupted grass. Stubborn leggy shoots off shorn, dead-looking stumps. Even the prize, perfectly formed pumpkin we brought home last fall and displayed (maybe illegally) on our condo deck was a volunteer specimen; growing and thriving quite nicely on some lonely dirt and weed pile in a vacant lot.

But you soon find out, cultivating life, and delight with it, is no small feat. You may prep and plant, water and weed all you want. You do not, however, control. Many of the parables Jesus told his disciples were agriculturally based. Perhaps because it was the best way he knew of to illustrate to people who thought they knew so much, about so much, that in essence they really knew nothing.

Growth is more than Science. A harvestable crop, more than hard work. Any gardener will tell you that.

I like to think we are past the intense, uncertain "baby" stage out at our garden. Gone, too, are the difficult, dramatic toddler years; maybe even the awkward, gangly adolescence. Things are in full swing and yielding results. We can see what we've got and barring some cruel act of nature (always a possibility) everything looks promising.

E and I were out there today working. Or, we were there today working out.

"You back is so lean and muscular," my husband commented the other day while massaging my neck. 'Let me tell you,' I wanted to reply. 'Those back muscles are hard-won. I have felt every single swing of my hoe.'

My knees, too, have felt the long crouching sessions. My eyes, the sting of rivers of sweat. I do have a nice tan and I've begun to suspect that the secret to strong nails is the natural vitamin B found in dirt. But my calloused palms and blistered feet may never be the same.

We harvested a literal bucket full of spinach and lettuce this morning. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it all. And this first round is only the beginning.

The weather was a perfect albeit odd blend of cool and humid. The lower night time temperatures were still battling it out with the warm earth and the result was a thick layer of damp, foggy mist. Without a bright sun in the overcast sky, there was no rapid burn-off either. It felt easy to toil away in conditions like that; Eden-esque, in fact. Everything was damp and moist and loose. The usual sun-baked, wind-blown feel out in that open field of garden plots was gone and there was a quiet, glistening hush all around. It's probably like that most days if you're there early enough. But we, of the deliberately slow three year old stage, are usually not there early enough. Someday, when Daddy is home two days in a row....like mid-July.....maybe?

But we are there, most days, none-the-less; me hoeing away the weeds that sprout and spread over night, long pony tail lank with the heat and humidity, any tan portion of my legs visible above my wellingtons dirt streaked. And E, smeared head to toe with caked-on mud, blond curls darkened and plastered to her head with the heat and humidity, sitting amid the newly hand-tilled rows. She generally starts off playing the water-fetching game, which serves to keep her occupied yet inevitably results in more water streaming down her little body than ever manages to stay inside the watering can and make it back to the garden. But after she tires of that and is saturated beyond hope she turns her attention to spearing small weed clods with a soil-polished sterling silver fork. Learning, first hand. Taking in this world of gardening the way our plants take in the sun.

The field of garden plots is adjacent to our city's jail (did I mention that?) and the inmates have their own section that they cultivate. E and I are a familiar sight to them by now and they stop and smile at her and comment on her helpfulness. In another time and place I'd have no shortage of unease over this. But somehow, in this acreage of lush green growth and vibrancy, it seems unremarkable. Normal. Matter of fact.

Like the line of unruly thistles that border the neat rows of our garden.

Like the chaos the exists, just beyond the edge of order.

We don't sense it all that often in the predictable drone of every day life. But it is there. As any gardener will tell you. And cultivating delight, amid the threat of ruin and disease and disaster, is the bigger picture we are all supposed to learn I think; the way of life tending a garden will teach you.

Thus the parables? I wonder........