Far as the Curse is Found

So you know the story of our ancestors Adam and Eve who made such a rotten decision in the produce section of The Garden of Eden. Rebellion, pride, arrogance, unbelief, and a long list of others motives mingled to introduce sin in to human experience and alienation from God, each other, and creation into the human condition.

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil

you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food.”

Donning our fig leaves we went about the next stage of our work on the X-Garden. As planned, we added the straw mulch to three of the beds. We returned to Cooper’s to pick up some additional plants – tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and watermelon – and another pound or two of encouragement, which Mr. Cooper offers freely. When the new plants were in place, we added mulch around them. This morning we planted some morning glories along the back garden fence and along the barbed wire fence by the road.

We raised two cattle panels in an A-frame construction to support the tomatoes and cucumbers when they begin to grow. All this work is an act of hope (James 4:7).

Melinda’s been taking seminars in Milton and Augustine this semester. Milton’s had her reading Paradise Lost and the Augustine seminar focuses on the Bishop of Hippo’s reading of Genesis. So all this gardening experience we have been working on at the farm has a theological and literary context.

She found a serpent in the garden (a Texas Spiny Lizard), whom she named "Satan." We also had a sighting of our Texas Rat Snake, my close encounters with which have been earlier recounted. He poked his head out of a drain pipe next to the house. I hope he's tired of eating dust and has developed an appetite for the many field mice around the place.

If my previous blog seemed a bit melancholy, reflecting on mortality, then perhaps it is appropriately so. Wrapped up in the curse that we are reminded of every time we grab a handful of Bermuda grass and pull it or decimate a thistle with a Weedeater is this word about our dustiness. Every time sweat runs down our face and mingles with the red earth we recall our dusty nature. Between Milton, Augustine, Genesis 3, the X-Garden, and the serpents, we have had plenty of reminders. (Oh, yeah, and there was also the expected, inevitable death of Murray, our lawn tractor who has served so faithfully for nearly 14 years. With great effort he finally started and cut his last field. When I turned him off to take a break, it was the last time he would breathe. His starter would not work. I know the feeling. Having spent more than his original cost of $1200 keeping him going these past four years, it is time to let him go.)

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil

you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

I am reminded that planting is an act of hope and that the story ends in a Garden, even as it began in one, and that a promise remains:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. (Revelation 22)