Another sunrise. A kaleidoscope of color in this one. Kinda wild.

I was thinking about this the other day. There are a couple of methods of gardening. You have one who plants his seed, then just lets whatever happens happen. If the seeds don't sprout, well, you know. If weeds over take the garden or bugs or animals, well, you know. I don't really understand this method, because it seems lazy & wasteful to me, but I think it's the most common method. They're checking off a box. They're going through the motions. I think it's for show, not really for the crop. They're too self involved to put the time in to make their garden grow.

Then you have the one who plants his seed, checks on it periodically, waters it when necessary, maybe fertilizes it if necessary, kills the bugs, builds a fence around the place to keep the animals out, regularly cultivates the ground to keep the weeds under control, & give his plants the advantage. You could say he cares for the plants, protects them, nurtures them, giving them the advantage. He devotes himself to his garden for the season, making sacrifices, putting in the work, always with an eye for the harvest. This method I understand, because you've invested in this for the allotted time, & the goal is to harvest a crop. I'd say this method is much more successful in getting a crop. Maybe a great crop, maybe not, but at least something.

I mean, in the end, the one who puts in the time (most of the time) reaps something, usually a lot. I've rarely had a garden where the crop failed. Sure, there could be a drought, a blight, a swarm of locusts, a flood, but outside fairly extreme circumstances, I've rarely put in the time & devotion & not reaped something, again, usually quite a bit. Once in a while the zucchini will fail or the sweet corn, or they'll under perform, but I don't think I've ever had an entire garden fail under ordinary circumstances. It's been much more normal for me to have way more than I can eat, so I gave produce away or sold it or canned it.

On the other hand, I've seen people devote virtually no time or effort & reap virtually nothing, because the bugs, animals, & weeds overtook the place. Let me clarify, they harvested tall, healthy weeds, fat critters, & fat bugs. I've seen weeds so thick & tall that even if the person wanted to harvest, he simply couldn't get to his crop, & had to mow everything off.

I'd say a garden is an adventure. You plow it & plant it & everything is pretty similar year to year, but there will be unique challenges & experiences, that you can rise to or choose not to. Maybe you won't need a fence this year for some reason. Maybe you won't need to water it. Maybe you'll have too much water. Each year, each garden presents problems for you to solve or not.

There's a life lesson here, just like with the sunrise. The sunrise only happens for a very finite moment in time. You can get there 10 minutes early & wait for it, or get there 10 minutes late, but the colors are only available for a very limited amount of time. Too early & it's too dark. Once the sun completely rises over the horizon, usually the colors are gone & it's over. And you're stuck waiting for 24ish hours before you can try it again. If you miss it, it's gone. And if you're unfortunate like me & are at work at dawn 5 days a week, you'll be waiting a lot longer for your next chance. But the time in between too dark & over can reveal some amazing colors. Don't go inside or you'll miss something.

There are a lot of life lessons with the garden. If you're not up for the challenge & adventure, you'd save a lot more money if you didn't plant one. Just buy canned veggies at the grocery store. I'm not saying you gotta live out in your garden, but you reap what you sow. No effort will more than likely get you no crop. (So, I guess if you put no effort in & get a teeny crop out of it, you've scored, right, lol?) Devotion will get you a crop, probably more than you can use. My buddy & I planted tomatoes one year & in a drought, & they grew taller than I am, probably close to 7 feet, before they finally fell over because of their own weight & by then we were just like, eh, whatever. We had so many tomatoes, we left some to rot, because we were overwhelmed. One of our friends did the same thing next year, only this time, he strapped them to his deck, which worked much better, but same story, just really tall & loaded with tomatoes. The life lesson here is with the measure you use, it'll be measured back to you & even more most of the time. And this goes with more than just gardens, but with people, work, hobbies, personal care & development, friendships, etc. I would think this would be a bigger SCORE! Invest a little & get a lot back.

Perhaps an interesting life lesson is that you come to the garden wanting to grow a crop & the garden (the ground) wants to grow too. You both have the same "mind" (?). It's different going to a glacier or a desert or a swamp & wanting to grow a crop & the ground mocks you. On the other hand, if you & the ground are like minded, it's still kinda your responsibility to grow the right stuff. Good ground will grow anything, but it lacks the ability to distinguish. You're the one that has to distinguiish between this plant & that plant.

I guess one last life lesson is if you undertake a garden (or any endeavor) & you have good ground & rise to the challenge & actually invest something, you have time to troubleshoot. A problem arises & you try this solution, but it doesn't work, so you try something else. Just not dealing with it at all doesn't solve the porblem & time probably compounds it, so you end up having to mow off the garden rather than harvest it. But attention & intention allows you the opportunity to try out different solutions, add to your toolbox of tools you can use (experience), & come up with a solution that works. Had our tomato problem happened earlier in the season, my buddy & I would've probably come up with a solution, but by the time you're overwhelmed (& in this case have harvested all we wanted), was it worth investing more into or had we gotten all we wanted out of it?