This weekend I did some work on the house. My bro helped out for most of it, so it was a good time just bonding (well I guess only if manual labor could be considered bonding.) We drained and cleaned the pool, did some random gardening, and shoveled a bunch of dirt from my front yard which we dumped at the Yolo county landfill.
The gardening got me thinking. I am a terrible gardener. Good gardeners constantly take care of their plants, weeding, watering, fertilizing and pruning on a consistent basis. I basically do gardening work once a year (probably not even that much) so my plants are under nourished, overgrown and surrounded by weeds. Despite my neglect, they still grow and thrive and actually provide me with fruit.
The lemon tree outside my window is teeming with lemons. They used to be really dry and tasteless, but for some reason in recent years they have been really juicy and pretty tasty. Last year I actually cut back the tree a lot, since it was really overgrown and blocking the pathway in my side yard. The tree is about half the size it used to be, but it’s still giving me more lemons than I know what to do with.
When I first moved into this house about five years ago, my dad planted this mandarin tree. This is the first year that it’s actually started to grow some decent fruit. They actually look really good. I’ll probably wait and let them ripen a bit more before eating them.
There’s also a navel orange tree in my side yard. I call this the Mike Hong tree, because it’s lazy like me. This year it produced a grand total of four oranges. Here’s one of them. The tree bears really juicy and tasty fruit, I just wish it grew more than four. How do you motivate a fruit tree?
Along the edges of my yard is a planter box. It was overgrown with weeds, which I pulled this past weekend. Surprisingly the the lily plants in the planter box are still alive. At least I think they are lilies– I know very, very little about flowers. I remember they grew some nice flowers. This reminded me of this passage, which is one of my favorite passages in the bible.
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. -Matthew 6:28-34
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