Organic Gardening Organic Worship

I feel like we will be shoveling manure for the rest of my life. The pile does seem to grow smaller each week and I wonder whether it’s all a matter of perspective. One day I hear a sound of our shovels scraping against the concrete and it’s the most exquisite Chopin to my ears. After spending eternity with my nose in the manure, I look up and the mountain is - gone! All that is left is a few scraps of dirt that we hose down, leaving the driveway sparkly clean. I can hardly believe my eyes.

I look at the Space Gardener and he smiles back at me. We did it!!  I am sore all over and so relieved, but I have to clarify the issue, for I want to ensure that I never ever have to deal with this mountain again.

Next time you want to provide some food for my garden, would you mind finding some less olfactory offensive alternative?

Maybe next time you plant the tomatoes, they might actually surprise you and smell and taste like the tomatoes are supposed to. Last time they were so insipid even the pinworms refused to eat them.

I peer at him suspiciously, wondering how in the world he knows about my tomato-growing fiasco.  The deep sense of humiliation returns as I visualize my bloated romas which even bugs, not to mention my own family, refused to eat.

Gardening is a rather messy business at times. He continues softly. It’s not for mysophobiacs. Dung and dirt are part of the deal, dear.  You'd better get used to it. If you want to disinfect, sanitize, deodorize everything in life, watch out lest you scrub the life out of it. If your goal is to keep everything clean, comfortable and - nice - he emphasized the last word - all the time, at all cost... soon enough your life turns into a bland concoction of nutritionally empty words and actions... much like the tasteless veggies you grow in your garden where one can’t tell the difference between a tomato and a squash, cilantro and St. Augustine grass. What comes out of your anesthetized, manure-free garden - tomatoes and all - becomes as insipid as your worship on Sunday morning... or the rest of the week, for that matter.


I don't want to sound stupid, but what I think I heard him say throws me off balance completely. I never thought that you could put growing tomatoes, a pile of manure and worshiping God in the same paragraph… much less the same sentence.