This spring, the Sowles family has planted its first garden. I’ve wanted to have a garden ever since we bought the house, but honestly, with three dogs (and one of them a big ‘un) there really wasn’t a good place to stake out 80 square feet. We tried container gardening. Didn’t go so well. We tried hanging plants. Nope. Everything we did was an epic fail (and mostly because of our black thumbs and super busy lifestyle). But the dream was always there.

Last summer we built a deck that necessitated the move of our shed to another part of the yard, otherwise I would have been subject to many head bumping episodes while trying to put the lawn mower away. Last fall our big dog had to be put to sleep. So, this spring we decided now is the time! The space our shed had previously occupied was perfect for a garden. The remaining two dogs were small enough that a little fence would keep them out.

So the Sowles’ made a list of all the things we’d like in our garden. Lake of course wanted blueberries and strawberries and red and yellow cherry tomatoes. McKinzi wanted green beans and carrots and just about anything that she’d be able to harvest on her own. Mommy wanted tomatoes and green peppers so I can make tons of Grandma Sowles’ chili sauce. Daddy would have been happy with no garden, though he’s looking forward to all the fresh produce! Tucker loves that he gets to play while the rest of us work!

That all being said, I had no idea how to do a garden. So this winter, I started doing research online. I even found a website that will help you plan your garden, which was IMMENSELY helpful. But then we had a mild winter and spring came early, totally throwing us off our game. It started getting hard, and as I am sometimes prone to do when I can’t be an expert at something, I was so tempted to just scrap the garden idea once again. I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t realize how much hard work it was going to be.

Mark to the rescue. It’s been cool working with him on the garden, picking out the items, watching the kids together as they discover new seedlings sprouting up and fruit blossoms starting to bear fruit. But what is even cooler is learning something new about my husband. We will have been married 12 years this June, together for nearly 14. In all that time, I have NEVER known that my husband took a horticulture class in high school. Now mind you, he doesn’t profess to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew more than I had even learned doing my internet research. I had no clue that one carrot plant purchased at the nursery would yield exactly one carrot. I thought we could plant two or three carrot plants and voilà! at harvest time we’d have a basket full of carrots. Same thing with cabbage and lettuce and all those other veggies.

I had no clue that we needed to build up our rows and create troughs for some of the seeds. I still don’t understand since apparently they get washed down into the trough (which I’m sure is why they recommend starting the seeds indoors, but we didn’t have time for that with the early start to spring). But Mark knew that’s what to do.

He knew we had to till the soil. I didn’t. I thought you would just dig a hole and plant the plant. Hah! What would I know.

But it’s been fun watching him be the gardener. I’ve just been following his lead.

I suppose it’s a lot like our relationship with God. Sometimes things seem hard, and we’re tempted to give up. But even though we’re not the experts on life, He is. We don’t know what He will do, but if we just step back and let Him guide our ways, we can reap an awesome harvest in the end. (Well, let’s see if our black thumbs will stay away). I could have totally ignored the fact that Mark knew more than me about this gardening business. I could have said, “I’ll work this out on my own.” And you know what, our garden would have been an epic fail, too … if it had even gotten planted.

But God doesn’t deliver failures. He delivers people FROM failures. And so God gave me my husband, and helped still the shouting voice inside of me that kept urging me to quit.

I am so thankful for my husband. I’m thankful that even though he could care less about having a garden, he’s doing a bunch of the hard laborious work that needs to be done. He’s the one slowing down and teaching the girls things. (I’m listening carefully because I’ve found that I don’t know a lot of the things he’s teaching them either). When the girls ask me why, or how, I simply state, let’s ask Daddy. I like that Daddy can be the expert in our house, too. It makes me feel all gooey inside, and it’s nice to know that it makes him feel good, too.

I know he’s not God, so the analogy isn’t perfect. And we may not avoid that epic fail this year, but I have a feeling that with Mark leading the way and God controlling the cycles of life growing in our garden and our home, we will probably learn a lot more to take into next season, and maybe, just maybe, be able to harvest something! We can’t kill everything can we?

So, that’s what we’re up to this summer. Our first garden. I’ll keep you posted. If you’ve got any gardening tips, feel free to share them!