Pictures, pride and pruning Garden this year one of the prettiest ever

Pictures, pride and pruning Garden this year one of the prettiest ever
                        
This year we had one of the prettiest, most well-manicured gardens we have ever had, thanks to the good Lord and lavish June rains. My daughter, who’s in grad school, was also a big part of that. She had three weeks off from her projects/studies and helped whip our garden into shape after I’d been gone for two full weeks and my husband gone for nine days. We arrived home from our travels to tomato vines running amok, cucumbers getting ready to bear, and corn and potatoes needing weeding and mulching with straw. I should have taken a “before” picture, and then another after two weeks of her pruning, when all was green and the produce was just beginning to bear. We even had great flowers. But I didn’t snap the pic. All too soon the summer crept on, the potato vines started dying, late blight hit the tomato vines, and then our early beans were badgered with beetles. Finally toward the end of August, a fierce storm came through and just devastated our beautiful corn rows. Now that I have a blog, I’m becoming much more mindful of taking pictures—and grabbing them today because the opportunity may be lost tomorrow, such as with my garden. It is also a reminder of grabbing opportunities to connect with our loved ones today because those chances may be lost tomorrow. Taking pictures reminds me of the world of our Amish and Old Order friends and neighbors (including many Another Way readers). If I were Amish, I think the thing that I would miss the most would be family photos. I cannot imagine raising a family or grandchildren or loved ones without having photos to remember them from earlier times. (Of course photos can be a burden and a curse: too many to deal with; unmarked; no one remembers the names, places, or faces; and a disturbing reminder of how young and skinny we once were.) One of the reasons for not allowing photos, I’m told, is that Amish and Old Order (please correct me if I’m wrong) believe there is potential for photos to make people prideful. If you pooh-pooh that idea, look at what great lengths people will go to have the whitest teeth and clearest skin and thinnest bodies so we can look like the models in the magazines and on TV. Photography may indeed foster too much pride in ourselves. Look at what people post of themselves on Facebook, or tweet on Twitter. Why did I want a picture of my garden at its best? Pride. Most of us who garden compare our efforts with gardens we see and either secretly think, mine looks nicer than that, or ours looks terrible compared to that—neither being a very healthy attitude. Yet it is normal. My mother remembers how much she longed for her mother to offer her praise. But Grandma was very sparse with it because she didn’t want Mom to get a big head. Because of that kind of upbringing, I think my parents struck an appropriate balance, praising good points and helping us work on our weaker points. A coworker and writer/editor Byron Rempel-Burkholder wrote about the dangers of pride recently in a blog post on bragging saying: “Humility is a mixed bag. In excess, it can sabotage the self-esteem we all need for our well-being. Restraining our joy over an accomplishment - ours or someone else’s - can undermine gratitude. On the other end of the spectrum, everyone knows how a swelled head can mess up our spirituality and our social life. In the middle somewhere is a humble kind of pride that allows us to celebrate God-given gifts and achievements.” Speaking of gardens, Byron and his wife, Melita, have worked hard on creating an innovative urban garden, raising a lot of produce on very little land. They entered their efforts in a Manitoba-wide gardening competition - not for the glory, but as a way of promoting the concepts and sharing them with others in the hope of more people eating better with locally grown foods - a good example of celebrating “God-given gifts and achievements.” (See online at http://tinyurl.com/ByronAndMelitaGarden) How do you work for a middle ground with your children regarding healthy praise? How can you prune the unwanted and unhealthy prideful feelings and attitudes that crop up from time to time - in yourself first, and managing it with your children? “Pride” is one chapter in my short booklet, 14 Days to a Better You: 7 Vices and 7 Virtues. Write and request a free copy from: Another Way, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803. Also, look for photos of my flattened garden on Facebook page “Another Way Newspaper Column.” Another Way is a column from MennoMedia by Melodie Davis. She is the author of nine books, most recently Whatever Happened to Dinner and has written Another Way since 1987. She also keeps a blog at www.FindingHarmonyBlog.com.


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load