Somehow that title doesn’t roll off the tongue and into the heart and mind as mellifluously as the inspired words that prompted it. “So I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Exodus 3:8, Numbers 14:8)
Neither does the expanded title I’ve been struggling with: “A land flowing with pickles, peppers, zucchini, edible-pod peas, kohlrabi, broccoli, green beans, and tomatoes.” Even though that expanded title attempts to track closely alongside the Lord’s inspired, expanded description of the Promised Land: “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey, a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.” (Deuteronomy 8:7-8)
Oh well, despite the title’s failures, perhaps you get my drift. I’ve got a great garden this year! Perhaps the best I’ve ever had over the span of my three-score years and ten. (I started early.) I’ve got pole beans and peas that have climbed to the top of my 8-foot deer fence. Cucumbers that have reached the tops of their trellises. I need to use a 42-inch long “grabber” to harvest them. The 2 kohlrabi in the picture are several of the little ones. I may need a front-end loader to harvest the rest. My tomatoes are just starting to ripen, on plants that are 6 feet tall and so filled with fruit, I’ve had to pound metal fence posts in next to them in order to straighten them. My zucchini are doing what zucchini do. I harvest regularly, because I don’t need another boat. (Oops! Missed one. At least I don’t need to license it.) I’ve got onions (finally) after years of frustration. Celery, parsley. Gypsy broccoli that produced grocery-store size heads. Ground cherries that are 6 feet tall and producing heavily. And acorn squash and delicata squash that snaked their way to the 8-foot deer fence, where the squash hangs, some 6 feet off the ground.
I could go on, and on, but this has been a great year for my garden! And why? Perhaps I should invite the thunderous applause of the crowds, because I did all the work. I put up the 8-foot deer fence and set up my garden using self-watering tubs fabricated out of halves of food-grade plastic 55 gallon drums, drainage pipe, landscape fabric, and pieces of PVC pipe, all topped with a mix of soil and compost that includes the muck I keep digging out of my lake (muck enhanced with puny perch poo and rotted milfoil). Or perhaps it’s because I have spaced the plants for better air-flow, preventing powdery mildew. Or it’s because I prune off all diseased leaves immediately. Or only water in the mornings. Or regularly fertilize with 10-10-10.
Or maybe it’s not me. Maybe I live in a land, next to a garden flowing with pickles, because the Lord has caused seeds to sprout and plants to flourish with warm sun, needed rains, and nutrient-rich lake muck. The same Lord who so richly blessed his Chosen People millennia ago with a land flowing with milk and honey, has richly blessed us to live in this land that could be described as “a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey, a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.”
Maybe I don’t have vines, fig trees, pomegranates and olive trees in my garden, but when I walk through it and harvest, I see the Lord’s hand of blessing. And I thank him for keeping his promise. “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)
It’s time to pick more pickles.
Privileged to serve,
Rev. Glenn Schwanke
Neither does the expanded title I’ve been struggling with: “A land flowing with pickles, peppers, zucchini, edible-pod peas, kohlrabi, broccoli, green beans, and tomatoes.” Even though that expanded title attempts to track closely alongside the Lord’s inspired, expanded description of the Promised Land: “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey, a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.” (Deuteronomy 8:7-8)
Oh well, despite the title’s failures, perhaps you get my drift. I’ve got a great garden this year! Perhaps the best I’ve ever had over the span of my three-score years and ten. (I started early.) I’ve got pole beans and peas that have climbed to the top of my 8-foot deer fence. Cucumbers that have reached the tops of their trellises. I need to use a 42-inch long “grabber” to harvest them. The 2 kohlrabi in the picture are several of the little ones. I may need a front-end loader to harvest the rest. My tomatoes are just starting to ripen, on plants that are 6 feet tall and so filled with fruit, I’ve had to pound metal fence posts in next to them in order to straighten them. My zucchini are doing what zucchini do. I harvest regularly, because I don’t need another boat. (Oops! Missed one. At least I don’t need to license it.) I’ve got onions (finally) after years of frustration. Celery, parsley. Gypsy broccoli that produced grocery-store size heads. Ground cherries that are 6 feet tall and producing heavily. And acorn squash and delicata squash that snaked their way to the 8-foot deer fence, where the squash hangs, some 6 feet off the ground.
I could go on, and on, but this has been a great year for my garden! And why? Perhaps I should invite the thunderous applause of the crowds, because I did all the work. I put up the 8-foot deer fence and set up my garden using self-watering tubs fabricated out of halves of food-grade plastic 55 gallon drums, drainage pipe, landscape fabric, and pieces of PVC pipe, all topped with a mix of soil and compost that includes the muck I keep digging out of my lake (muck enhanced with puny perch poo and rotted milfoil). Or perhaps it’s because I have spaced the plants for better air-flow, preventing powdery mildew. Or it’s because I prune off all diseased leaves immediately. Or only water in the mornings. Or regularly fertilize with 10-10-10.
Or maybe it’s not me. Maybe I live in a land, next to a garden flowing with pickles, because the Lord has caused seeds to sprout and plants to flourish with warm sun, needed rains, and nutrient-rich lake muck. The same Lord who so richly blessed his Chosen People millennia ago with a land flowing with milk and honey, has richly blessed us to live in this land that could be described as “a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey, a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.”
Maybe I don’t have vines, fig trees, pomegranates and olive trees in my garden, but when I walk through it and harvest, I see the Lord’s hand of blessing. And I thank him for keeping his promise. “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)
It’s time to pick more pickles.
Privileged to serve,
Rev. Glenn Schwanke
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