JUSTIFICATION FOR GARDENING IN RURAL SOUTHWEST ALABAMA (on Sunday?)

I just skipped church for health reasons. I had just been on the road way too much lately and myself said “Stop”! I have learned to listen to my body when it talks to me. I have learned that if I will do that, then my body doesn’t have to do something drastic like catch the flu to get my attention.

I sat on my porch, which is a good as a church sanctuary for felling close to god. I really believe that phrase that one is a close to god in a garden as any place on earth. My porch sits in the middle of a garden - my front yard. Of course, after sitting for a few minutes, I thought of all the nice plants my friends and family had given me for my birthday. Because I have been on the road so much, they were unplanted. I know that a lot of the old folks thought God would get you if you worked on Sunday. I think that God should stay in the Old Testament where he belongs. I’ll probably get some hate mail over that one. I got some over saying Billy Joe Royal was old and around here God ia a lot more popular than billy Joe Royal and a lot older. A lot of people in rural Southwest Alabama don’t like it when you mess with their traditions, whether they are yours or not. I think it’s fine to garden on Sunday. For me, Gardening is a joy, not a chore. Besides, I don’t often get time to do it during the week. I’m not trying to debate theology. Nobdoy ever wins at that. Opinions are like noses, everybody’s got one. We can’t wear each other’s noses and we’ve got just about as much use for somebody else’s opinion as we have their noses.

The devil didn’t make me do it, Mother Nature did and I think she’s God’s best friend. I had to get those plants out. I had a pile of them. One of them was an investment plant. My sister-in-law asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told her I wanted a Limelight hydrangea. She had given me one two years before and I had lost it in the drought. The local nursery didn’t have one, so she had to go down the road to a place where they think a whole lot of their plants. I know this for a fact because as I was buying some pants from them one day, I saw some phlox they had thrown out in a ditch coming up and asked if I could have one. They said no. I could come back in 8 weeks and buy one. I haven’t had much use for those folks ever since. Gardeners share, especially when people are already paying you good money for other plants. I felt really bad about her having to go there to find one and REALLY bad about what they charged. They do a lot of landscaping for people with more money than the inclination to garden. I knew that I had to get that plant in the ground as a tribute to her generosity in even being willing to trust me with one again, especially since she went to the scalping place to get me one. I couldn’t let this one die, too. I had a bunch of other plants from gardening friends as well.

Sunday gardening is not a chore for me. I had walked around the yard earlier in the week and made mental notes about where to put things. I have a goal of one day having no yard except paths and flowers. I moved one step closer to the goal today. After much trial and error, I have learned that some plants like shade and some like sun. Some however, don’t really give a happy damn. I had a bunch of new daylilies to plant. They fall in the happy damn category. They were my first gardening success many years ago. You can throw them out and say “grow”. They will. They can live through anything, even being dug up and thrown in a ditch. In fact, I saw a whole ditchful blooming happily just up the road. I mad a new bed for them near the porch. I have a big secret garden on the side of the house, but in the past few years’ I’ve done more and more gardening near the porch where I can see it bloom and the people passing by in the street can enjoy it, too. That’s where the new daylilies are. I hope they are as happy as I was this Sunday morning planting them. I see it’s clouding up. Maybe God will help me water them. I’ll consider that a Divine Sign that He didn’t much mind that I wasn’t at church today; I think all of nature is HIS HOUSE. So much for my Sunday theology position, it’s not original with me. I really got the urge started by talking to a Baptist friend last night. She said how much she enjoyed sitting around drinking coffee on Sunday morning. When I got up and my body said “Whoa!” I thought of how much I’d enjoy a day off from church. I really did enjoy it. I hope where ever you spent Sunday, you enjoyed it, too!