Today is Friday, April 26th, 2013; Karen's Korner #2554

Hope you enjoy this 'prayer' included in "Chicken Soup for the Soul for the Gardener's Soul". It's fun to read 'chicken soup' books and ones like them as you really don't devour them like a novel. Instead you taste them a few pages at a time, when you have a handful of extra minutes.
 
"Prayer of a Gardening Mother"
 
Dear God, give me the strength to grow a garden.
 
Give me the perseverance to find a portion of dirt in my backyard that's free from old popsicle sticks and sand toys, out of range of the swing set, and not used as a tricycle parking lot or a soccer field.
 
Give me the courage to face the fact that the crate of bulbs that took six weeks to be delivered and three hours of the backbreaking labor to plant, can be dug up in five minutes by a two-year-old with a spoon.
 
Guide me through the backyard over plastic toys irrigation systems and wire mesh to unravel the dog from the watering hose for the fifteenth time.
 
Help me accept that everything in my garden is either expensive, high maintenance or unpronounceable, and the only thing that looks the same as it did in the mail-order catalog is the dirt.
 
Grant me patience when my daughter waters all of the bulbs with apple juice because 'they look thirsty'.
 
Give me the strength to remain silent when my husband puts pans of beer throughout the garden to get rid of the snails.
 
In your infinite wisdom, show me how to turn off the drip irrigation system that has been on since sometime in mid-March.
 
Grant me serenity when my son presents me with a bouquet of freshly pulled daffodils crammed into an old plastic sand bucket---and the ability to smile when he tries to put them back.
 
Comfort me when all of the beer pans in the garden are empty---and the dog is staggering around the backyard trying to do the limbo with low branches on the apple tree.
 
And if I ask too much, God, just give me the foresight to know that no matter what I do, by the end of the summer the flowers will be run over by plastic roller skates, the gardening stakes will be used for goal posts, and the fertile soil will, once again, be filled with old popsicle sticks and sand toys---and I wouldn't have it any other way.
 
~ Debbie Farmer
 
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