Unexpected Blessings from the Ugly Garden

Because we live on a shady city lot, I have to claim every little patch of sunshine and call it garden space.  I have one section of the yard with some garden boxes that my kind father made for me.  It is an orderly space...well planned and well kept.  And then I have the section of the yard that I call The Ugly Garden.  I had to just stick seedlings in the ground where ever there was adequate sun.  The area behind this garden patch boasts of an overgrown lot and a neighbor's broken down fence. There are no tidy boarders outlining what is yard and what is garden; it just all kind of runs together in chaotic fashion. None of it is very impressive looking.  However, an abundant harvest came from my Ugly Garden this year.  It isn't pretty, but it has good soil and needed sun, is well watered, and has lots of visiting bees.  God blessed this little patch with fruitfulness in spite of its aesthetic limitations.

At the end of the gardening season a wind storm blew down my last two tomato plants in the Ugly Garden. I just left them there to decay naturally, figuring that I would pile some leaves on top of them this fall and let them enrich the soil a bit this winter. You can imagine my surprise when, in the early weeks of fall, I noticed dozens of ripening tomatoes!  Although the plants had blown down, the roots were still in the ground and each branch had grown vertically towards the sunlight. The plants had kept right on blossoming and producing fruit, even though the main stalks were horizontal against the ground! In the few weeks just before our first fall frost, forty-one additional tomatoes came from my two blown-down-given-up-for-dead plants! What a lovely set of reminders this gave me: 1.) Keep your roots growing in the Lord and His Word--even if you get knocked over, you can keep on being fruitful if your roots are in place; 2.) Be careful not to give up on things and people too quickly--looks can be deceiving; new growth can come when least expected;God can use anyone and any situation to bear fruit for His glory!   3.) There is great benefit in giving things a little time; wait, pray and see what the Lord does. 4.) It is the Lord's blessing that brings the increase, not the labor of our hands. He may use our hands, but He may choose to work in other ways as well!
Be encouraged if you find yourself blown over by life these days.  Rest in Him, and let Him produce fruit in you for His glory!

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.   ---John 15:5