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# The garden this morning (VII)
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/the-garden-this-morning-vii/
- Published: 2026-08-26T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T10:00:00.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional, #Week 14, #garden, #light, #103

*"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how."* — Mark 4:26-27

The garden this morning looked like it had made up its mind about something.

The beans have been done since the middle of the month and the row where they were is just brown stalks and dry pods and I have not pulled them yet because pulling them feels like agreeing that the thing is over. The peppers are still holding. The herbs along the south fence are woody and spreading and have a smell that comes up when you brush against them, which is different from the smell in June when they were green and tender. The zinnias are at their tallest and their most tired. They are blooming, which is what they were made for, and they will do it until the frost takes them, which is how zinnias are.

The tomatoes are still coming but they are coming slower. Four where there were twelve. The cherry tomatoes, which in July I could not keep up with, have slowed to a handful every other day. I picked what was ripe and put it in the bowl on the counter and the bowl was not full, which is the first time since the first of August that the bowl was not full.

I planted this garden in April when the ground was cold and wet and I did not know what it would give me. I never know what it will give me. I put the seeds in the ground and I water and I weed and I wait and the garden does what it does, which is grow in its own time and in its own way and give what it decides to give. I have been gardening for forty-seven years and I still do not understand how it works. I understand the mechanics. I do not understand the mystery.

The garden is making its turn. I can see it. The light is lower and the mornings are cooler and the garden can feel the change the way I can feel the change, in the body, before the mind catches up. Something is finishing. Something else is getting ready to begin.

I let it go. That is what the garden teaches me every August. Let it go. The ground knows what it is doing.

*Lord, you scatter and you grow and I do not need to understand how.*