Planting Seeds

 Josh has spent a little extra time this spring preparing for our garden.  He's decided to try something new this year that I think might make our soil a little better without the kind of weeding that we haven't really been able to do.  It's called Ruth Stout's method.  The result, so far, is that we haven't been able to plant anything.  We bought plenty of seeds but we may have to go get some plants just to get caught up... except for one area. 

Last fall Josh tossed a pumpkin into the garden when he was pulling up all the dead plants.  Josh figured it was just compost for next year, though why he didn't walk 15 feet and throw it into the actual compost heap, I don't know.  The result?  About three weeks ago, after Josh had tilled the first time, we started to see a patch of plants come up.  Pumpkin plants, in roughly a round shape, like an exploded pumpkin.  

We spend so much of our lives trying to be intentional and we plant our little seeds in neat rows and cultivate our soil with cover crops and compost and fertilizer.  What we forget is that we're scattering seeds when we aren't even intending to.  When things pop up in unexpected places, it's often because we weren't paying attention, but it's also because we have a God who makes the most of even our ham-handed attempts at producing fruit.  

Now, I have to be honest.  The pumpkin came from seeds that were probably genetically modified, which means we aren't likely to actually get anything out of the plants that's really eatable.  Josh was building raised beds, so he sort of just built around the plants.  It's not as neat as the little rows he had planned, but it seemed right to let them stay.  Josh and I thought we might just wait and see what God can do with the plants.