Tag: planting

Too Many Beets in the Bucket

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

“You got too many,” I tell him. “I know,” he replies, “that’s why I’m thinning them out.”

I watch my husband as he pulls out the tiny red threads from the bucket of soil. A few weeks ago, he threw a handful of beet seeds in a blue plastic bucket and now they’re all springing up. It’s kind of miraculous to bear witness to life bursting from seeds; but it’s also not very productive; it’s not good to plant that many seeds in such a tiny plot of earth.

Beets are one of several cultivated varieties of Beta vulgaris, plants grown for their edible taproots and leaves. We mostly just eat the roots; and if you want a good beet root, you got to give it space. In fact, you need as much, if not more space, to have the root grow into a delicious red ball as you need for the leaves to spread out on top of the ground. Thinning is required to grow this plant.

Author Wayne Muller writes about the need for thinning in his book, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. He writes about a friend sharing what she learned about thinning and pruning a garden in a letter she wrote him one spring.

In one of the Sabbath practices found at the end of every chapter, Muller tells the reader, “Frances writes to me: We have an abundance of growing vegetables…I couldn’t believe how you could plant seeds and then all this stuff would just come up with abandon. I knew I needed to thin those turnips and carrots – but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought maybe they’ll grow anyway. So I never did thin or prune… They also never did grow. Not one turnip did I get – although there were tons of greens.”

Muller goes on to say that “thinning is, as Francis says, making space for life. We plant so many seeds, and they seem so small, so benign, they take up hardly any space at all. But everything, as it grows, needs space.”

Spring is a great season for planting. It’s a wonderful time to throw out seeds and dream of a plot of land teeming with life. It’s the great season of growth.

But it’s also a great time to be intentional about what we’re hoping to accomplish, what we want growing in our gardens. It’s the season of plenty but it’s also the season of discernment.

As you enjoy the warming of the earth, the green bursting around you, the flowering trees, the blades and stems of bulbs breaking through ground, remember not to try and do too much, plant too many seeds, involve yourself in too many projects. Remember that thinning and pruning, discarding, letting go, is also a part of a healthy garden. Just remember and pay attention to everything you’re agreeing to do; and don’t plant too many beets in the bucket.

The Seeds of Others

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

Once we moved into a church parsonage in Washington State in late October where I took the position as Interim Pastor. The front and back yards, though small, had landscaped flower beds wrapping around the house and garage. No one told us what was planted in the beds. No one told us what to expect once winter ended. In the first few weeks of spring at least forty or fifty bulbs had broken through the thawed ground and by early May, this house we called home for a few more months, was surrounded by color, bathed in the hues of spring. We came to realize that we lived in a beauty imagined and created by the hearts and hands of others.

In that season of birth and new growth and in a place gardened by others, I was reminded of the power of planting seeds. I was reminded of the hope that emerges in the hearts of planters, how diligently farmers and gardeners rake and plow and dig and make way for life. Every year lovers of the earth go to nurseries and stores, purchase the seeds or bulbs that offer possibilities, and in faith, with care and hope, drop them into the earth in joyful anticipation. Most plant gardens for themselves but some folks, like the anonymous members of that church, hearty ones who love to landscape and care for church properties, plant their bulbs and seeds for others.

It is the same in spiritual gardens. We plant seeds of kindness, faith, hope, joy, love, peace, and patience in our own hearts, hoping to enjoy the bounty of our work and desire. We plant seeds within our souls, toiling with tools to grow spiritual gifts that we look forward to see come to fruition. We pray and study and meditate and practice for us to become patient, to become kind, to become people of peace and love. It is the harvest of our work for our own souls. But we also plant seeds in the hearts of others, in temporary places, in organizations, places of worship, in souls of those who may or may not ever know our names. We plant seeds without having to reap the bounty. We plant seeds without needing to watch the garden grow. We plant seeds letting the hope of what might come, the power of what may spring forth, the joy we expect for someone else, to be reason enough to keep planting.

I’m sure I could have asked members of the Trustees who planted those bulbs that grew in perfectly-spaced rows, filling the beds in the front and back yards of the parsonage and someone would have given me names; but I did not. Instead as they popped and bloomed I thought of the people in my life who planted seeds within my soul and never saw what grew. I think of grandmothers and teachers, the parents of my adolescent friends, the authors of books that shaped me, the countless words of wisdom from others that fell like seeds in my soul and have finally begun to bloom. I will think of planting my own seeds, being kind to strangers, writing words of hope, working for justice and peace, and learn how to be content with just the planting. It takes faith to grow a garden you don’t get to harvest. It takes faith to plant a seed. I know because I lived that season in the center of someone else’s hopes for spring.