lessons in giant pumpkins

A year ago in October, a friend was describing the process of growing giant pumpkins. Listening to her, however, I knew it was an analogy for my life. Hang with me here as I describe the process:

Giant pumpkins take a special kind of seed planted in a excellent blend of fertilized soil. They need a lot of sunshine, and a fair amount of water.

The good growing conditions are not enough. Once the vine has grown to a certain length, and the flowers have turned into a number of small round fruits, the farmer has to do some knowledgeable selection.

The farmer's role is crucial. She chooses the one best pumpkin on the vine she believes will grow to be a giant, and must pinch off all the other baby pumpkins. They all look like they could grow to be equally large, but she must choose.

If they aren't pinched, then a good number of pumpkins will grow, but none of them will be of unique size. You see, there is only a certain amount of nutrients to go around. Funneling all of the energy of the plant into one fruit is what creates the giant, prize-winning pumpkin. One vine can produce either a lot of normal sized pumpkins, or one giant pumpkin, but it cannot do both.

My friend's narration of the process confirmed that in my life it was pumpkin pinching time. Part of that, I knew immediately, was laying this little blog aside for a while - it was one thing that could be pinched.

The timing of all this fell a few months after our return to the U.S. from a season of overseas adventure. A season when nearly everything that gave me comfort had been stripped away. I didn't feel surprised that my little writing hobby here was next.

I was decidedly disappointed. Mostly in myself, realizing that I am not capable of carrying all things well (this truth always comes as a surprise to me). After all of the letting go through our year's adventures, after all the laying down of things, it was disappointing that there was still more to surrender. There always will be.

Through the disappointment, I could see a gentle INVITATION. God's ways are never forceful, they are invitational. Trust me with the gifts I gave you in the first place, He faithfully whispered into that anxious place in my heart. Another invitation to lay something down is another invitation to grow

Writing has been a great gift to me. To me. It had become a gift of allowing me a place to process in all of those years stuck at home with small children. A gift of using my brain in a season of very limited academic stimulation. A gift of encouragement when I couldn't actually be with other human beings over 3 feet tall. A gift of having a place to articulate all of the growth I was experiencing as a mother, without physically leaving my house full of babies. A gift of using a gift right from my living room at nap time.

Then this past spring, our family got out in the dirt together to begin our vegetable garden, around 6 months after the conversation with my friend. I came across an old paper bag we've had lying around the garage for years labeled "GIANT PUMPKIN SEEDS". It was surely a sign.

For fun, I investigated and discovered that the grand prize for giant pumpkins at our local county fair is $400. Exciting! This must be the year that pinching pumpkin in gardens and lives would lead to something glorious, potentially ending in a notable prize.

I planted 10 seeds. Despite being many years old, every single of one of them sprouted. The amount of green vine produced from 10 seeds soon took over the perimeter of the garden overflowing onto the driveway. Despite some loss of vines to gophers and others to poor location, very quickly my garden became a jungle of pumpkins vines (with some tomatoes, green beans and sunflowers mixed in.)

Favorite summer game: pretending to be bunnies in the overgrown garden.

Choosing a few of the Giant Pumpkin vines that looked worthy, I faithfully pinched, watered, and rolled those pumpkins regularly for roundness, doing everything I could to grow a giant prize winning pumpkin.

Despite all of my best efforts, at the end of the summer, my largest pumpkin came in a good 400 pounds below the weight of the County Fair prize-winners. They were beautiful, but not big enough to bother entering the county contest.

It seems to me that God has a very good sense of humor. While I felt certain that I was called into pinching pumpkins and funneling my energy into just a few things I am called to do well (namely, parenting children and being present in the lives of those in a few select ministries right in front of me), God's little metaphor helped me see that His intentions were never for me to end up a prize-winner.

Sometimes we are simply called to lay things down. They may be inherently good and wholesome things, gifts from God Himself. Laying one thing down may be the key to allowing something else to grow. A lot of times, the things we faithfully cultivate will not be prize-winners, and that doesn't mean they aren't worthy.

We ended up with somewhere over 50 individual pumpkins and an uncounted number of small gourds in our garden this year. Ironically, most of the vines came up as volunteers out of the compost pile, which means they didn't take any energy from me at all. I never expected the abundance of fruit I didn't plant.

Perhaps we found more joy in giving our abundance of pumpkins away to friends and family than we would have in any prize? After giving so many away, we still ended up with a porch full of pumpkins. Because I grew them myself, I loved all of their imperfections, warts, ridiculous stems and dents more than usual this year.

I share this today because, after all this time, I may pick up and write on this blog periodically, and I may not. Either way, I've learned a lot about pinching pumpkins, and a lot about what it means to lay one thing down in my life in order to let something else grow. Not a single one of us can grow all things well. Maybe you, too, need encouragement to lay something down.

From seed trays...

... to planting in rows...

... to garden jungle.

Help bringing in the harvest.

Carve 'em up!

As a much better surprise at the County Fair than an award for a giant piece of fruit was Annike's fun "Best In Show" award for her collection of bird nests! We do love the County Fair!

plant your garden

One of the hardest things about this season abroad for us has been all of the transitions we have faced. We have had housing changes, and friend changes, and school changes, and neighbor changes, and routine changes, and even a change in the country we live in, resulting in a significantly different culture and community change mid-way through our time here. Flexibility has become our motto, but some of the transitions grow tiring over time.

Around a month ago we made the move to our new residence in Switzerland, which has turned out to be a lovely place and even comes with household pets that the kids adore. There is a long and involved story that I won't tell here, but this house is only ours for 3 months, at which point we need to find another place to live. Another transition. Another unknown. Another distraction from the things I expected to be focused on.

Meanwhile, in this season of changing fall colors and tentative plans, I have been thinking about our garden from our California home. It takes some degree of permanence to want to plant a garden. This year, we opted not to plant our vegetables because we knew we wouldn't be home to harvest them. What is the point of planting a garden if you can't enjoy the fruit?

As we were getting ready to leave back in June, however, we discovered a large vine of volunteer pumpkins sprouting on the hillside beside the driveway. It started itself from last year's gourds that we aimlessly tossed into a composting hole, and looked like it might produce 20-30 large pumpkins. I have to laugh because I always dream of having an entire porch full of pumpkins that I didn't have to pay $15 each for, and this would have been the year. Never would I have planted those pumpkins knowing I wouldn't be around to harvest the fruit.

Living under temporary circumstances can send us into a form of self-preservation fearing the commitment or energy it takes to invest in something that might not end up being permanent. Whether it is pumpkins or relationships, I find that the changes, the uncertainties, and the knowledge of upcoming transitions, makes me hold back.

In a season full of temporaries, I struggle with not wanting to invest in whatever today holds because tomorrow I might discover it was all for nought.

No one knew this better than the exiles of Israel, who were carried from Jerusalem into a foreign land against their will, with no return plan in sight. Please don't mistakenly assume that is how I would describe myself right now, it is just to say that the exiles knew better than anyone what it meant to be strangers in a land leading a life full of transitions.

Jeremiah 29 is a beautiful chapter in the Old Testament written as an exhortation for them to get up and live their lives no matter what they thought might come in their future. This is a passage quite well known for a few verses that promise God's prospering plans, hope, and future. While it is wonderful to receive an encouraging promise for the unknowns in life, sometimes we want more. Sometimes we also want instructions about what to do next:

"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper... 

"...For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.""  

Jeremiah 29:4-7, 11-13

More than just a promise, these are instructions on how to live while we wait.

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat..." Those things don't happen overnight. They take time, and materials, and energy, and the hope of getting to enjoy the house built out of much labor, or the fruit produced by that garden.

The truth is that no one can ever know what is in store for the future. Some of us are living in a season we believe will be the same for the next 20 years - but that can only be an illusion. We can't know what will happen tomorrow, no matter how secure today seems. I might be feeling a bit unstable as I see the reality of transitions approaching, but they are coming whether I see them or not.

In this season of temporaries, I recognize God's desire for me to plant gardens even if I am not the one who gets to harvest the fruit, or eat it. His instructions are to invest no matter what I see in the future. And to trust His prospering plan.

Might you, also, be living in a place that you didn't intend?  Plant your garden.

Feeling left behind by others who are pursuing their dreams while you wonder if you will ever get to pursue yours?  Plant your garden. 

At home with small children who deter all goals and sense of productivity?  Plant your garden.

Stuck in a job that you don't want forever?  Plant your garden.

Dreaming of a future that is more comfortable, or more exciting, or less hard work? Plant your garden.

In "exile" somewhere, not knowing how to proceed?  Plant your garden.

Stop wasting time waiting around for a different season in life, or wishing things were different. Plant your garden.

 

garden goods

Our garden hasn't done quite as well as it did last year. I suppose we have been focusing on growing little people this year, instead of vegetables.

Still, we got a large crop of tomatoes, quite a few handfuls of peas, many ears of corn and some delicious carrots. Tip for other parents of a super-picky non-eating toddler:  have a garden. There is nothing like pulling something out of the dirt to make a 2-year-old want to eat it.

We lost a lot of our plants to mold, or birds, or a family of 6 baby turkeys that discovered the raised bed. The one crop that seemed to be immune to the animals were the pumpkins.

If you want to plant one thing for the fun of watching it grow with kids, I highly recommend pumpkins. These grew like Jack's magic beanstalk. We could practically see the vines stretching out over the earth with each passing day, the gourds getting bigger, turning green, then orange.

I've been seeing pictures on facebook of everyone with their cute kids at the pumpkin patch. Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch too. Except that we didn't have to get in the car. We walked out the front door to harvest our pumpkins from our very own side yard!

I admit our little patch is not quite as artistically displayed as the professional lots, but the kids had just as much fun in this one. In fact, they have been having fun in it all summer long. The girls each "claimed" their pumpkin months ago while they were still green. They watched them grow, and were excited to finally pick and place them on the porch.

I always love the idea of having a large pile of pumpkins on my doorstep, but at $10-$15 dollars each it can really add up! Is anyone else shocked at the price of pumpkins these days? Someone is making a lot of money on this Halloween commodity. We can now tell you from experience that they don't cost a lot to grow. The $3 spent on the packet of seeds was well spent.

The little guy even got in on some of the action!

\

Another great joy we find in our garden is the opportunity to give of our abundance. My husband teaches me a lot about this, and I guess I have a lot to learn.

Every time one of our little friends comes over, he suggests that we let them pick a pumpkin to take home. I was selfishly excited about putting all 15 of the pumpkins we grew on our porch for the fall. But it is such a good feeling to share the joy with others. So much better than feeling pride in an overly decorated porch. Seriously, who needs 15 pumpkins on the porch?

Especially when the things that matter most are already there.

apples in the orchard

My friend Jessica inspires me. A year ago in October, she had the brilliant idea to capture these priceless photos of newborn Sommer. Of course, the pictures were special at the time.

One year later, however, these pictures have reached a new level of meaningful. Only somewhat because Sommer would rather eat liverwurst than sleep, let alone in the orchard. I find myself staring at the baby in the photo on our wall with affection and nostalgia, and a hint of envy at her state of innocent bliss.

On this hot day last October a sliver of our experience on this farm was frozen in time behind that camera lens. Meaningful because the time is slipping away. Inspiring because never would I have personally thought to combine these two important elements in our life: baby and farm. And yet, they are immiscible.

This year, Sommer is not sleeping in the orchard. She is eating apples and picking weeds and getting muddy like a good little farm girl does. It seems those newborn pictures were prophetic. Life here is part of her very being. She is a lover of nature, an admirer of all things outdoorsy, and has a noticeably sunny disposition, just like her name might imply.

Thank you, Jessica, for inspiring our newest annual tradition of photos in the orchard.