Asparagus

Marcel Proust wrote "Asparagus transforms my chamberpot to a flask of perfume" (1871-1921)

So I just learned that asparagus is a diuretic (makes you pee) and generates a foul (or perfume-like) odor. Hmmm. Good to know. Anyway, the photo to the right is our first harvest of the year. We will have a good month of asparagus for dinner. (And all that apparently goes with it).

Ed planted asparagus in our garden about four years ago, and we have not harvested until now. Unlike most vegetables, the roots must develop a big enough root system, and should not be harvested at all the first year, very little the second and third. Then the bounty comes. If the gardener is patient and vigilant about weeding and cultivating the plants for the first three years, as much as a ten year period of production will come from the plants. Some varieties have been know to produce a human lifetime.

The amazing thing about asparagus is that is is the first vegetable in the spring. In fact, today we picked dinner from the snow-covered garden. Remarkable.

The obvious metaphor is that as gardeners in this life we must be patient and able to bear long years and the winters before the growth and harvest will be possible. I guess I think that asparagus is alot like a teenager. You work and pray and guide and bear much in parenting a teen. And after years of "gardening" amongst the weeds and the snow, good things will come. But we must be patient and vigilant.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom
He had formed. Genesis 2:8 KJ

Don't you get a sense that God has been patiently waiting a really, really long time for us to be ready?