Good Soil
“Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” Luke 8:8
For years I had a flower bed on the west side of my house that I called my Bermuda Triangle, because, like its namesake in the Caribbean Sea, mysterious things seemed to happen there. When I first bought the place, the flower bed on the east side of the front stoop grew an exuberant and eclectic mix of creamy yarrow, pink and red hollyhocks, yellow creeping jenny, a few wild oats and an unnamed white-flowering shrub. On the west side, however, the soil glowered black and barren. Curious was the large wooden planter plunked in the middle of it, apparently awaiting annual planting. I should have recognized this as foreshadowing, but my joy in home ownership glossed over all such warning.
I plunged ahead that first summer, dragging away the planter box. Why would anyone put a planter in a bed full of perfectly good Saskatchewan soil? I huffed to myself, perspiration trickling into my eyes. Why indeed. I amended the dark gumbo by digging in bags of manure and peat moss, then raked it level and planted a selection of perennials—bleeding hearts, astilbes, columbines, hostas—and a bedraggled fuchsia-coloured peony I found on sale late in the season. My joy was short lived as the plants, so happy in the stores, struggled in their new setting. By fall, only the peony retained the will to live.
Next spring only few of my plant babies returned and struggled for a few months before capitulating—except, of course, my stubborn little peony. I watered, I fertilized, I fussed. Finally, I blamed the towering evergreen on our front lawn, with its perpetual needles and mid-day shade.
We removed the evergreen that fall, hoping the increased sunlight and the end of pine needle litter would improve the Bermuda Triangle bed, but the depressing scene continued for the next several years as I experimented with new varieties and new strategies. I consulted the plant store and plant friends and wrangled more bags of soil amendments from the car to the resistant plot and muscled them into the soil with shovel and rake. I tried fall bulbs and a gaggle of never-fail perennials like day lilies, irises, salvia—even a hardy rose. Invariably, my heart sank as the summer progressed and my sweet little garden withered. The east flower bed partied on in glorious display while the fragrant bending blooms of the lone peony soldiered on in the anemic west bed.
Finally, in year eight, I planted more peonies in the Bermuda and they seemed to get on healthfully. And wonder of wonders: a few plants from the previous year returned and did the same, even blooming. Even stranger were the rogue petunias, presumably blown from their homes in pots on the stoop, which took root and grew wildly over any open space in this bed. The fuchsia peony, which had doubled every year, was expansive in approval.
The next year, more plants returned and I added perennial asters and a complement of annual petunias and soon the Bermuda was an explosion of life and colour that rivaled the east bed. It made me happy every time I pulled into my drive. “So, what happened?” I asked my older and wiser gardening friend. She smiled, shrugged, and said, “sometimes it takes a long time for the soil to heal.”
Her words jolted me and reminded me that I am sometimes like that reluctant flower bed, damaged and empty, the joy of life drained, written off by the world. I have despaired of the slow change in myself as I contend with consequences of poor choices and the general messiness of life. I have doubted ever “getting there” to that place of spiritual arrival.
At these times, instead of turning to God, it is tempting to install the equivalent of a planter box of annual flowers, to distract a parched heart with work and activity and to prop up a wounded soul with things planted on the surface. None of it lasts if there aren’t enough nutrients beneath to sustain it.
Any fruit in my life is a product of my relationship with the Master Gardener, and He is always more concerned with my roots than short-lived surface blooms. His way is to enrich me with His Word, amend me with His Spirit, so that I am a soil ready for extravagant blossom. My job is to yield. His tending is gentle as He prunes attitudes, habits or activities to make room for new growth. He never gives up. He digs deep and there’s no place He won’t go, no soil too far gone.
Slowly but surely, He is doing a work and it’s mostly all below the surface. If I listen closely, sometimes I can hear His voice in my garden: keep going, Little Peony…go hard, Brave Petunia! I am with you.
“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
Carla Taylor-Brown