Farm Town Games and St. Teresa's Gardening Tips

One of my Facebook friends is into the myFarm game. It's not a real farm. Your Facebook friends can send you not-real plants and animals as gifts for your not-real farm.

Yes, it is for people who have far too much time on their hands. Or maybe it's for people who would like to grow a real garden, but don't have that much time - or land.

I have forty-some myFarm gifts waiting for me to get started on virtual farming. Can't imagine I will get around to it, but I hang onto the plum trees and mango trees, my cat and my bunny and my cow, all those Farm Town gifts, just in case.

It reminds me of a passage in The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila. She talks at length about a garden for God. How we can draw water from the well to care for God's garden.

The water comes from prayers, from tears, from great devotion. At times, God is doing the watering, when we enter seasons of dryness. Even then, the rain comes. God takes over and does the watering.

The plants are virtues which the Lord (with our cooperation) causes to grow and to produce a harvest.

"If it be His will that these plants and flowers shall grow, some of them with water drawn from this well and some without it, what is that to me? Do as You will, O Lord, and let me not offend You. If You have, of Your kindness alone, given me any virtues, do not let them perish. . . Fulfill Your will in me" (80-81). "What shall the gardener do now? He shall be glad and take comfort, and consider it the greatest favour that he is working in the garden of so mighty an Emperor" (79). -St. Teresa of Avila

This is a garden that I can (and must) tend. This is a garden (though it remains invisible to the eye) which requires and merits my effort. This is a garden that some will consider to be as silly as a Farm Town game. As imaginary. Something akin to a child's game.

But no, this garden has another name. This garden is the soul. And there is no greater joy than that of having the Lord of the garden pass through and find all things rightly ordered. To have Him reach out and pluck a plum or mango from this orchard. There is no greater joy.

This is no imaginary place. It is real. I am the gardener. And the Lord is the Lord of the harvest.

Farm Town Games and St. Teresa's Gardening Tips

Tons of Tomatoes

I have never had success at growing anything - until this year.

The green beans grew well. The green onions - quite well. But the roma tomatoes grew like kudzu in Atlanta.

I've got tomatoes in the refrigerator, tomatoes up and down the countertop, and even more tomatoes ripe and ready to be picked, still on the vine. I can see them from the house. Little bright red balls in a mass of green leaves.

For once, I understand the verse, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray that the Lord of the harvest will send workers into the field."

If souls are as ripe and ready as my tomato plants, then the Lord of the harvest must be really frustrated by lack of workers.

The worst thing I can imagine is for those tomatoes to sit out there and rot on the vine.

And so, this morning, I gathered up as many as I could, even went outside and picked more, and I put them in ziploc bags and gave them away.

What a sense of accomplishment. This is how it should be. Every tomato has a home.

You are the worker in God's fields. The Lord of the harvest needs you to help harvest the souls that are ripe and ready, the souls that are waiting, the souls that just might rot on the vine if the workers don't answer the call to go and bring them into the House.

Tons of Tomatoes