I stopped at the end of the driveway to check the mailbox. When I get back in the car, a friendly grasshopper joined me. I gently encourage her to leave out the open door. While she hopped out, two more jump in. I grab them and toss them outside and quicky shut the door. Ain’t nobody got time for that!As I make the drive to the house, there were no fewer then 20 impacts on the side of my car. The grasshoppers clunk spook when you drive past so clunk they jump right into the side clunk of the car. Clunk. As crazy hot as it is right now (111f), there are the equivalent crazy volume of grasshoppers.
Jenny and some of the kids are down sick, so I’ve got all the animals and garden responsibilities this night. Usually I do the animals and maintenance tasks around the farm while Jenny cultivates and nurtures the garden after livestock. After several years of my anarchy gardening strategy, she has come along and enforced rigid rows and strict water disciplines. It’s working, even with the onslaught of grasshoppers doing their best impersonation of locusts this year. Clunk.
Gardens are busy places. Among the tomatoes I found flowers in the pollination stage, green tomatoes leveling up, and ripe red tomatoes for harvest. In the middle was a zipper spider, ready and eager to capture and consume grasshoppers tearing through the place. Look! Even a baby spider coming along nicely.
Taking a step away from any garden helps bring perspective. The distress and violence in always in the micro. It’s in the conflict of the insects and arachnids, weeds competing for water with the productivity plants, rampaging fungus flowering in the shadows, and dismal leaves rotting from ground contact.
When you see the whole macro garden you see abundance and re-creation. You see canopies of green making life from sunbeams. You see seeds wrapped in nutrients meant to be consumed. You see nothing is wasted, even the losses cycle back into the system for new life. I see the father God in that cycle, and it’s a reminder for me how he looks at the heart of the man and not just the problems obvious in the micro view.
One nights harvest, so many melons to eat and preserve and share. Time to turn these chickens loose of the clunkers.