The Eternal Garden

Yesterday I picked beans, cleaned beans, and canned beans. All on a day featuring 100 degree temperatures. The beans were ready, even if I wasn't.

I was alone in my garden, but I didn't feel alone. It was like I could feel my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and all the others who came before me right there with me. I realized that ever since woman's creation we've done this thing: We've tilled, seeded, and harvested in order to feed our families. That in itself is such a humbling thing. The schedule of the earth and the seasons becomes your schedule. There is something about that natural cycle that is just so real, you know? We can't put it off, we can't do it when it's convenient, the time for harvest is now, and we must answer that call or the crop goes to waste. Not only must we pick on time, but we must process that crop or, once again, it goes to waste. So you stand there with sweat rolling down your neck, back, legs, until you finish the job.

We always say firewood warms you twice, once when you're cutting, and again when you burn. The garden is the same... only it doesn't just warm your body, it warms your soul. It feeds a deeper need we have, a connection with what's real on this earth, and what's really important. In that moment when you're sweating and itching and looking forward to that cold beer, ice tea, water from the hose even, you know you're doing what millions of women all through time and from all over the world have done, were designed to do. And somehow you're content. And you're never alone.