Gods Garden
…if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will moved …– Matthew 17:20
Last year I prepared my fall garden; tilling in the remaining summer tomato vines and the last of my green beans. I planned out my rows and what to plant. I dug out some mustard seed that had been collected from the previous years garden.
Mustard greens are similar to turnip greens or collard greens but not nearly as cold tolerant. As collards experience their first frost, the flavors get better and sweeter. Mustards are not the like that. The frost usually kills them or at least knocks them back considerably to the point where you can’t really harvest them.
It was early fall. actually more like late summer and the first frost was still a good month or two away so we had plenty of time to get mustard in the ground and mature to harvest so I put in a row.
South Arkansas is not known for cold weather. This year our first frost would come later than normal. Our first frost would not come until the last of November, first of December. This deep freeze really stunted our mustard greens.
By this time we’d already had several batches of mustard‘s and our collards and turnip greens were already coming along just as well. Not having anything else left to plant. I just left them be without tilling them under.
Winter had set in. Carrots, collards turnip greens, and a little lettuce is about all that remained in the garden throughout the winter and they all did fairly well. not the mustard‘s but some how they managed to stay alive. Well some of them anyway.
Winter made its slow progression as January turned into February. Hoping to make some green manure, the mustard‘s eventually got tilled into the ground. I did however leave one small patch that I plan to leave to go to seed to produce seed for the following year‘s garden. A few random plants had already been pulled up and cast off to the side which didn’t get tilled under but we expected they would soon die since their roots were no longer in the ground. these plants had actually already begun to bolt and were producing flowers.
Right around Valentine’s Day 2021, a strong winter storm, the strongest in my 42 years hit. Many people I talked to in their 80s had also never seen a winter storm hit south Arkansas with over 10 inches of snow and low single digit temperatures and for an extended period of time. My garden was covered a deep blanket of snow for over a week solid.
As the snow finally began to melt away I walked through my garden I noticed the mustard greens that had already been pulled up were still blooming.
The plants had been pulled up by their roots. they had been tilled under. They had been stomped on. they had been covered in deep snow and frigid temperatures for an extended period of time separated from the other planets. Still, tiny yellow flowers appeared through the melting snow.
So, as soon as the ground dried out. I tilled them under again!
It’s now April. Most of my summer garden has been planted. One or two rows remain barren. One of those rows was my mustard row.
As I looked at the row today, something caught my eye sticking up out of the dirt. I’d planted okra but it is not okra sporting. It was mustard seed plods.
After all the plants had been through, they still managed to bloom, and produce fruit.
Have you ever been left for dead? Pulled out of your preferred situation. No friends. No honey bees fawning over you while you watch others bask in the sun. Alone. Stomped on. Beaten down.
Gods word says we are to have the faith of a tiny, insignificant mustard seed. God my allow you to be beaten down, trampled over, and discarded by the world. We still have to stay focused on Christ.
The saying goes, bloom where you are planted. Never give up. Stay faithful to God for he has not forgotten you. He cares for you and he has given you a job to do. Get busy doing it.
