On Friday night we had a homemade dinner and a movie for our date, the way we do when we’re being cheap. It was delicious. On my plate were T-bone steak, four ears of corn, steamed green beans, and fresh tomato slices. For dessert we had a stack of Reliant and Frontenac grape clusters. I was raving to my wife by way of compliment when I realized that all of this food came from our land. The steak was from my father’s beefs. The corn, the green beans, and the tomatoes had just been picked from my garden. The grapes were from my vines. I don’t say this to brag, but only because bragging is too mild a word. It would be hard to exaggerate how pleased I was and am. I feel pretty frothy about it.

The Reliant grapes are being attacked pretty heavily by June Bugs aka Japanese Beetles, so before we sat down to eat we had to pick through the clusters to remove all the spoiled grapes. About half our green bean vines died this year because of a failed experiment with graywater from the washing machine and because two enthusiastic gardeners both fertilized in May without either telling the other. It’s been a busy week, so we didn’t pick the green beans fast enough and about half were too stringy to snap and use. We have enough tomatoes for eating, but not enough for canning this year I started with over 160 seedlings, including a scores of seeds from varieties I hadn’t grown before that are known for their taste, plus old tasty favorites like the Purple Cherokee. I planted 90 tomatoes, replanted the ones that died from the curly top virus until I ran out of plants, and then watched big gaping wholes open in my tomato rows. I now have 10 healthy plants. Curly top got the rest of them. That was pretty discouraging. I also have a dozen fruit trees which between them all have produced a handful of apples, three peaches, and one pear. One heirloom apple variety called Orange Cox Pippin that would have put on its first fruit this year died instead.

In May and June when I was pulling eight stinking tomato vines from my garden a week, I didn’t think I would be rejoicing in August.

Miracles are messy, my wife said yesterday. Just one of those observations that pop into your head and then you share. Look at Abraham and Sarah, she said. Imagine being a 90-year old Mom, she said.

She’s right. Gardens are messy. They are still, or even because of it, a pointer to paradise. Sometimes the mess makes the miracle. We feed my dad’s cattle with our too-stringy green beans. We feed our garden with his cowpies.

And sometimes the mess is just your purple sticky hands from gobbling grapes.

Frontenac grapes–the number one choice for purply sticky hands at Greenwood House. Modeled by a young lady of my acquaintance.