Garden gumption

On Saturday morning I was playing in the yard with our elder urchin and looked at the largely fallow vegetable garden I had started a couple years ago. We have a few pepper plants, one eggplant, a baby grapevine (the only one of seven cuttings to survive since I took them this past winter) and a rather depressed cherry tomato plant, all in pots. None of the garden beds are in use because of our otherwise lovely mesquite trees. Gardening tip: never plant anything with any water requirements whatever under or near a mesquite tree unless you use containers. The mesquite will aggressively take all the water.

Anyhoo, I decided to try gardening again. Partly to experience the struggle of working the earth after the fall. Partly because I realize that the only way to really fail as a gardener is to stop trying, to be unimpacted by all I have learned from my past failures. Like, ‘Don’t plant a garden near a mesquite.’

 

Genesis

Some thoughts on the first three chapters of Genesis.

 

Parables, storms, and pigs in the sea

I was reading Mark last night. I noticed a few things about Jesus.

 

Scriptures

If I’m going to do an honest inquiry about what it means to follow Jesus and be concerned for the environment, I’d better consider what Scripture has to say about creation. I’ll post some verses and comments soon.

 

What to do with the food issue…

The year we got married I started cultivating an interest in gardening. We planted a square foot garden a-la Mel Bartholomew. We tried salad greens, radishes, carrots and peas in a winter garden. Some of the veggies grew well but it was almost immediately apparent neither of us had any idea how to grow and harvest vegetables. So the radishes were hollow and bland, the lettuce bolted and got bitter, the peas never really produced more than a couple pods, the carrots were tiny and stunted, and the only plants that seemed to do really well were Swiss chard (which we decided we didn’t care for) and nasturtiums.

 

The environment: why should I care?

Given my assumption that God cares about his creation, I think I should care about it if only because he does, and as a Christ-follower who believes he is indwelt with the Holy Spirit, not caring is denying something about what God made me to be. (Forgive me for not getting into the theology about all that; basically I am saying that a Christ-follower not caring about God’s creation is just silly.) So my question is not really, ‘Should I care about the environment?’ but, ‘To what degree should I care about the environment?’

 

Some foundational things

First off I would like to lay a few foundational things. One is, what do I mean when I say ‘environment’? It’s a pretty broad word and it can mean a lot of things. Generally speaking, when I use it I am talking about the world God made. Plants, animals, rocks, air, seas, sky, sun, moon, stars, what have you.

Second, I want to state for the record that I believe that God created the environment. I could care less if he did it in six days or six gazillion years, the only thing that is important to me is that he made it. And he made you and me. Since he made it and us, I think it’s clear that he means for us to interact with and relate to the environment.

Third, I am going to presume that God cares about the things he makes very much, and therefore he cares about the environment and he cares about us. I would also like to present the assumption that he cares whether we care about the environment and about each other, and for that matter, about him.

 

Some questions about God, the environment, and our place in it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be green and Christian at the same time.