The Rookie Gardener Despairs, then Rejoices

On struggling with garden metaphors

“My garden plants are blooming–but there are no vegetables!” I lamented to a friend a few weeks ago. We were sitting in a parked car after I had picked her up from the train station, trying to catch up on our lives between summer travels. 

I was giving her a status update on my okra patch, describing how the blooms kept coming, but the pods were shriveling and dying. I explained how I had been Googling symptoms and thought the lack of okra might be a pollination problem, so I had been taking a little paintbrush outside, dusting the insides of the blooms, and trying to help them out. 

“No luck,” I lamented. “I’m worried it might be a metaphor for my life. Everything looks good on the outside, but there’s no real fruit.” 

My friend looked sideways at me. It was a look of empathy, with a slight hint of, okay, sister, slow down that train of thought. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She opened it again.

“Look, I get it,” she said. “Sometimes, I try to find the metaphor in everything, too, and worry about the ones that seem ominous. But don’t go there too quickly.”

How can I not find the metaphor in everything? I wanted to say. Isn’t that what writers do? 

“Let me tell you what I see,” she said, waving her arms around like she was about to dish some friend wisdom, so I had better pay attention. “I don’t see failure in this story. I’m thinking of the word tending. You’re watering every day through a heat wave. Taking your little paintbrush out there. Even all the things you just told me about taking your kids to the pool, or working with clients - that sounds like tending to me.”

I was still pouting about the okra, but I tried to listen to this different story—a more hopeful one than I had decided to believe.

“Hey,” she said. “Some plants are just harder to grow than others. You chose tricky ones.”

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After the conversation with my friend, I left on vacation. I hired a neighbor girl to water the plants, and while we were away, she—and my plants—got a lucky break: the heat wave broke. It finally rained and cooled down. 

The night we returned, I walked through the yard in the dark and peered at my plants, but I couldn’t see a thing.

The next morning, though, I went outside to find what I feared: a half-dozen shriveled pods lining the stems of my okra, and NO ACTUAL OKRA. (No zucchini, either, but let’s save the zucchini story for another day.)

I texted my mom. “Lots of blooms on my okra—still no pods.”

She wrote back. “Dad thinks maybe it’s the seeds he gave you.” They were last season’s seeds, and maybe something was wrong with them.

That was Sunday. By Monday morning, I had decided the okra plants were a flop, and I should stop watering them. Here’s the part where I confess to you how mature I am, because I actually got a little angry at those plants.

Yes, I got angry at plants. 

But it’s never about the thing, is it? Beneath the surface, I was mulling not only about the okra, but also about all the other things I’m tending. I was thinking about how hard it is to grow children and businesses and writing projects, and all the questions I have about those things for God, for myself, for the future. 

If I couldn’t grow some simple okra seeds, could I grow anything? 

(This was getting dramatic, I know.)

The day passed from morning to evening. Later that night, when I walked by the unwatered okra on my way back from our van, I paused. Something inside of the plants looked … different. One of the pods looked longer than usual, just before the part where it usually shrivels and dies. It was greener. Fuzzier. 

I took a picture and texted my mom. I didn’t want to hope yet; maybe it was just another bud that would eventually die.

“Is this okra?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, followed by three heart emojis.

Friends, I rejoiced over that solitary okra like my children rejoicing over a quarter on the sidewalk. When I harvested it the next day (a little early, perhaps), I took selfies with the okra pod. My son happened to see them on my phone later, and he laughed at me.

“How many pictures did you take of okra, mom? FOURTEEN?”

Did I make an okra photo college? Yes, I did.

In other words, I am not playing it cool. I have continued to laugh about the timing of it all. Of course the okra arrived on the very day I had lost all hope—isn’t that always how it works? Is there a metaphor in there, somewhere? I’m not sure, but I might have heard God chuckling.

Since then, more pods have grown. I am harvesting okra every day. Today, there were five more beautiful blooms, and I wandered out there with my daughter and we swirled the paintbrush inside their purple centers, spreading yellow pollen around like an artist who cannot control the final outcome, but simply wants to be part of the process.

With or without me—even in spite of me—something has grown. No one can steal my joy.

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Before I go! I've designed a writing class on creating within limits (busy schedules, imposter syndrome, or even non-growing okra) and I’m teaching it again starting August 29th! Come write with me.