A Practical Walk

I’ve been nervous about transplanting my little veggie plants in our raised garden bed. If I move them to a pot, there’s still the option to bring them back in the house in case of high winds, too much sun, or hail (also frost, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a threat anymore).

It makes it worse, that I’m inexperienced, and I’m still learning when and how to move them.

Yesterday I finally moved some plants to the bed:

• 1 celery that I’m regrowing from a store-bought one.
• 2 cucumber plants
• 1 squash plant

As I fretted that evening over my plants’ first night outside, my husband suggested I put a cup over them for the night. My main concern was the wind being too much for them. So I put cups on the cucumber and squash plants.

That night I was woken up by loud noises. Hail! I got out of bed and went to the front door. Outside there was a mixture of pea-sized and marble-sized hail falling. Everyone in the house ended up awake from the racket.

The next morning I went outside to check on the plants. Taking the plastic cups off them, I saw that they looked okay. Boy was I thankful my husband suggested that!

Look! Mr. Cucumber plant is still alive after last night’s storm!

I overheard my husband putting it accurately, “Katy’s worst fear came true, the day she puts her plants out, it hails!”

Transplanting is hard, both in the literal sense for young plants and in the figurative sense for us people. I tend to fear the worst. Most of the time those worst-case scenarios don’t actually come about, but sometimes…it does hail right after you transplant those delicate seedlings.

There’s been things in my life, and the lives of my loved ones that I wish had never happened. Things I wish we could’ve prevented. Just like I care about my plants and am trying to take good care of them. God cares about us. The difference is that He really is a Master Gardener,* not a newbie like me. That doesn’t mean hard things don’t happen, on the contrary, His children face many trials!** But nothing, can separate us from His love.*** Nobody can take Him away from us. There is no better Gardener to have over my life!

* “‘I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.’” John 14:1 NET, Jesus speaking, read the rest of the chapter for more detail.

**Dear friends, do not be astonished that a trial by fire is occuring among you, as though something strange were happening to you.” 1 Peter 4:12 NET

*** “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we encounter death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us! For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39 NET