I picked the last of my bib lettuce last night. It had begun to bolt in the hot July weather. Eating it at lunch today I couldn't help but notice how it was almost bitter and how different the taste is then when I began harvesting the lettuce in May. The first leaves were fragile and sweet. Today’s leaves are tough. And bitter. But still so much better than what we can buy at the supermarket. I realized, too, that eating only commercially grown lettuce I would have missed the change in tastes.
I was prompted to reflect again about the holiness of working a garden. Dare I say that it is sacramental? I feel gratitude while in the garden. I feel connected to something beyond myself. The mystery that is nature. The blessedness of God's creation. (Fellow NCR staffer Rich Heffern writes much more eloquently on this subject.)
These things were on my mine when I came across this essay by Jack Heppner of Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada:
I heard a lot myself in Heppner's essay. Like me, Jack says,
What it means, I guess, is doing what you can.
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