By Rev. Judith Laxer

There is always something to do in the garden, especially in the height of summer. Weeding, watering, watching. If you sharpen your ability to notice and observe, you’ll find that July usually offers surprises. Some are disappointing to discover, like that hardy looking Delicata Squash that just withered and lost its green overnight, or the big, burly radish plants that turned out to be all leaf and no root and therefore nothing more than mere bio mass for the compost pile. Too much nitrogen in the soil.

But then there are the delights to discover, especially if you make use of your homemade compost. My compost pile never quite reaches the level of heat needed to kill off seeds, so it remains chock full of them, viable for each new growing season. By July, I find them growing everywhere, like that one shy lettuce hiding amid the parsnips, the showy snapdragons that took over a prime corner of real estate in a raised bed, and the one small but elegant corn stalk beside the trillium far away from the rest of the crop. Not to mention the prolific sweet Cherry tomato plants popping up in just about every bed, and even in every flower pot on my deck. This year is the seventh generation of that one beauty so long ago. I make sure to let several fall into the soil at the end of the season to ensure more deliciousness the next year. Of course, all these surprises have been growing since early Spring, it’s just that now they have grown large enough to spot. Some of them have been easily identifiable, like the rounded squash leaves I found sprouting in the compost pile itself. Successfully transplanted, it is now outgrowing and out-producing the other squash starts I bought from the nursery. But as I weeded my way around the beds, I knew that some of the plants were not weeds, although I didn’t know what they were. So I left them growing.

Turns out, the ones I thought were sunflowers, are tomatillos. This is perhaps the biggest surprise because the one and only tomatillo I planted last year grew tall and stately, loaded with pretty, downward-looking, yellow flowers, but did not produce one single, seed-containing fruit! Without tomatillo seeds, their prolific presence in my garden is a complete surprise and a total mystery.

It causes me to ponder. If my life is like compost, made of the transformation and regeneration of the worn-out, used-up scraps that once fed me, what is growing from it that surprises me now? What seeds have I planted unknowingly? Or better yet, in keeping with this mystery, what never came to fruition but has somehow still generated life? As I walk around my garden, picking peas and kale for tonight’s dinner and lettuces, herbs and flowers for the salad, my soul remembers that it is a part of everything, made of everything. And I don’t need to know anything more than that to understand it as a deeper mystery.

I have counted no less than nine tomatillo plants now growing in my garden, towering above the rest, showing off their flowers. Time will tell if there will be any to harvest.

Rev. Judith Laxer is a modern day mystic who believes that humor, beauty and the wonders of nature make life worth living. She is the founding Priestess of Gaia’s Temple, an inclusive, Earth-based Ministry with over a decade of service. www.gaiastemple.org, www.judithlaxer.com

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