Plants take time to become established in our gardens, and sometimes, the wait seems much too long before we see any progress. Today, I reflected on a time when our home didn’t have a garden. Instead, it had a hillside covered with low-lying ground cover. It was not especially pretty, and it served as perfect camouflage for mice. It obviously had to go!

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My husband and I removed every last kinnikinnick bush from that steep hillside and started over, rimming the garden with large rocks, then building and stacking terraced beds and filling them with dark, rich soil.

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We had the freedom to choose what to put in our garden and tried all sorts of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, including pumpkins, cucumbers, raspberries, and blueberries. At the top of the garden, my husband put up a large windmill, and I planted a honeysuckle bush. We waited and waited for it to produce any flowers and one spring, maybe two years later, I saw a little yellow flower. Oh, it was beautiful. Long and delicate with the sweetest fragrance. I picked it and put it in a deep blue shot glass, then displayed it on my dining room table. I was so excited!

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The honeysuckle bush continued to grow, shooting out large viny tendrils that grasped onto my red currant bushes and became entwined in my irises, lemon balm, and berry bushes. Before we knew it, the entire windmill was covered in vines!

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But something remarkable happened. Due to the thick foliage that encased the windmill, a family of fox sparrows moved in and made their nest inside, completely sheltered from predators and shaded from the summer sun. The vines produced more blooms, making our entire yard smell incredibly sweet. The hummingbirds came to have a taste, and the mama rabbits laid their bunnies in one of the raised beds.

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Did the wildlife eat most of our crops? Yes, they did! And who could blame them? The delicious produce was fresh, organic, and ripe. And the honeysuckle continued to thrive.

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The six-foot-tall windmill is no longer visible. I’ve tried to trim the beautiful vines to give them a little shape, but they always come right back and bloom even more abundantly the following summer.

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I sometimes look at my garden and feel overwhelmed about the growth, so I get out my tools and pull some weeds, trim some herbs, pick some flowers, and celebrate. Abundance can sometimes look very messy and mismanaged, but when I sit and gaze upon it and watch the bumblebees and yellow butterflies dance through it, I see that we didn’t create this garden just for us. We have created a diverse ecosystem that has become a safe haven for all of God’s creatures who come to enjoy it, too.

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In times like these, I recognize that I can be more like that honeysuckle vine by pushing myself to take risks and grow; maybe that growth will bring some beauty into my life that will brighten the lives of the people around me.