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Gardening, my dear, is a messy business. He
slowly takes the shovel from my hand and puts it away. Dung
and dirt are a part of the deal - you'd better get used to it. Even embrace
it. If you try to disinfect, sanitize, deodorize everything in life, watch
out lest you scrub the very life out of it.
The germaphobe in me cringes
at his words. I like things nice and clean, smooth
and easy! I might be able to tolerate small, carefully contained areas of mess for a short period of time. The thought of embracing the dirt, the mess goes against everything
my mother has been instilling in me all these years. I
can’t extract my mother out of me! She'd kill me!
He continues on, undeterred by the
internal panic clearly spelled out on my tormented face.
If you try to keep everything
sterilized and mess-free 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, washed-out
veggies you grow in your garden where one can’t tell the difference between a
tomato and a squash, cilantro and St. Augustine grass.
I blink unsure I see the
connection he seems to be making between my pathetic vegetable garden and my life. Before I am able to clarify the misunderstanding, he concludes,
What comes out of your
anesthetized, manure-free garden - tomatoes and all - becomes as insipid as what you call 'worship' on Sunday morning.
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