Plumb Tuckered Out
Friends, I'm plumb tuckered out. The day after the first day of tending the gardens is always interesting. Every muscle in my body is protesting. Yesterday I hauled bricks, moved four heavy piles of compost, and picked up yard debris for around five hours. Then in the evening, we rearranged the upstairs to have a larger office area. I am quite sore today and I know this means I am too soft.
This morning I thought of an old book and pulled it from the shelf.
I cherish old books with rough cuts pages and notes from previous owners. Inside the well-loved pages, the previous owner made a note near this passage:
I was dead tired when I reached home; but there wasn't a grain of depression in my fatigue, --rather a sense of elation. I felt for the first time in thirty years real things were doing and I was having a hand in them. The fatigue was the same old tire that used to come after a hard day on my father's farm, and the sense was so suggestive of youth that I could not help feeling younger. I have never gotten away from the faith that the real seed of life lies hidden in the soil, that the man who gives it a chance to germinate is a benefactor, and that things done in connection with the land are about the only real things. I have grown younger, stronger, happier, with each year of personal contact with the soil. I am thankful for seven years of it, and look forward to twice seven more. I have lost the softness which nearly wilted me that 5th day of August, and with the softness has gone twenty or thirty pounds of useless flesh. I am hard, active, and strong for a man of sixty, and I can do a fair day's work.
I wonder who previously owned this book and how it spoke to them? The culture and lifestyle of 1904 America was vastly different from today. People were more connected to the land which God gave for cultivation and provision.
It is good to work so hard that you are plumb tuckered out. I have let myself get soft over the years and have a mass of useless flesh to lose. I am so tired of being soft.
By God's grace, I will lose it a pound at a time. As I journey along the way, I hope to plant many gardens that will flourish and provide for family and friends. I think I have many more plumb tuckered out days ahead this spring and summer. This is good.
Friends, what are you planting this year? I would love to see pictures of your gardens.
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| A small start to our gardens |
This morning I thought of an old book and pulled it from the shelf.
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| The Fat of the Land by John Williams Streeter (1904) |
I cherish old books with rough cuts pages and notes from previous owners. Inside the well-loved pages, the previous owner made a note near this passage:
I was dead tired when I reached home; but there wasn't a grain of depression in my fatigue, --rather a sense of elation. I felt for the first time in thirty years real things were doing and I was having a hand in them. The fatigue was the same old tire that used to come after a hard day on my father's farm, and the sense was so suggestive of youth that I could not help feeling younger. I have never gotten away from the faith that the real seed of life lies hidden in the soil, that the man who gives it a chance to germinate is a benefactor, and that things done in connection with the land are about the only real things. I have grown younger, stronger, happier, with each year of personal contact with the soil. I am thankful for seven years of it, and look forward to twice seven more. I have lost the softness which nearly wilted me that 5th day of August, and with the softness has gone twenty or thirty pounds of useless flesh. I am hard, active, and strong for a man of sixty, and I can do a fair day's work.
I wonder who previously owned this book and how it spoke to them? The culture and lifestyle of 1904 America was vastly different from today. People were more connected to the land which God gave for cultivation and provision.
It is good to work so hard that you are plumb tuckered out. I have let myself get soft over the years and have a mass of useless flesh to lose. I am so tired of being soft.
By God's grace, I will lose it a pound at a time. As I journey along the way, I hope to plant many gardens that will flourish and provide for family and friends. I think I have many more plumb tuckered out days ahead this spring and summer. This is good.
Friends, what are you planting this year? I would love to see pictures of your gardens.
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