Summer Gardening 5

For many years, my father led the adult class at the Methodist Church in my hometown of Pine Village, Indiana. Perhaps it was there that he honed his understanding of stewardship. As my father was far wiser than I can ever hope to be, it has taken me a long time to begin to comprehend the meaning that my father attached to the concept. The slender tendrils of my thought have grown from my gardening.

Void Where My Beets and Onions Had Grown

Stewardship means leaving things as good as, if not better than, they were when they were acquired. Obtained by earlier generations, such things are left to later generations. Fulfilling the obligation is what is meant by being a good steward.

In my garden, I use no manmade “cides”: herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides. By avoiding the temptation to apply manufactured chemicals, I hope to leave the soil in a healthy condition. I rotate the vegetables from one location within the garden to another, ensuring that legumes periodically return nitrogen to the earth.

Unbelievably Tall Sunflowers in My Garden

I remain aware of birds, butterflies, and bees. I plan a floral border that can sustain all three. Next year, I want to return to a mixture of zinnias, giant marigolds, and other medium-sized flowers, but, after watching flocks of finches appreciating this year’s sunflowers, I believe I should plant some of them, too. Maybe I can anchor the corners of the border with tall sunflowers but plant none in between.

Recycling is part of my effort to be a good steward, and I am always on the watch for broken glass or rusty nails that I can remove from the garden so that no one risks an injury while working or walking there.

My Sunflower Border in Full Bloom

Chuang Tsu said, “At the still-point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”* While standing in the middle of my garden and listening to the buzz of the cicadas in mid-August, I perceive that the boundary of my flowers is hardly a boundary at all and that the earth of which my garden is a small part spreads ever outward around the globe. Stewardship of my small portion of the planet is stewardship of the planet. Chuang Tsu commented, “To be constant is to be useful. To be useful is to realize one’s true nature. Realization of one’s true nature is happiness.”

Sunflowers Are Funflowers

If I were to say, “I am a gardener,” my statement would be closer to my true nature and to happiness than if I were to say, “I am a professor.” Even so, both expressions are true, and both link me to the experience of this time and place and to times and places farther off. Stewardship invites recognition of one’s location in the infinite. Stewardship is the ultimate global positioning system.

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*Chuang Tsu Inner Chapters: A New Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage, 1974).