The importance of husbandry...

This was the lovely crop from my little garden this morning: tomatoes (grape, cherry, and large ones), some lemon cucumbers, a meal's worth of green beans, and a bag full of beets.  It feels so productive to pick things in the cool of the morning!

One gardening regret that I have this summer, though it is a small one, is that I never went out and thinned the beets. (Thinning, for those of you who have never gardened, is when you wait for the little seedlings to emerge, then pull out any that are too close together for the plant to develop.) Now my beets are a tangle of plants, too crowded to develop fruit correctly.  So I am pulling out some small ones and hoping to give growing room to others.  This would have been so much easier if I had done it when the leaves were just sprouting and I could see what was what.  But instead, I am lookin through tangles of big beet tops, trying to select the ones big enough to use and still make room for others.  Sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes not.

So I find here another great life lesson from the garden: when the proper thinning and pruning is neglected, the fruit that results will suffer. If it makes a difference whether or not I thin my beets, what about pruning in my heart, where the seeds of virtue and Christ-likeness can become tangled and overhwelmed by other things that will keep my fruit from developing? Husbandry-- in the garden and in the family and in the heart-- is a very important discipline!