My cousin visited from the city last month. She looked at our garden and said "Why don't you grow something interesting? Something exotic?" She showed me pictures on her phone of vegetables I've never heard of, flowers with names I can't pronounce. All things that need perfect conditions, special soil, constant attention.

I told her: we grow what grows here. What our grandmothers grew. What we know how to preserve for winter. She laughed, not meanly, but like I was quaint. Like I was playing at being a farmer when I could be doing something "better" 🥔

This is what I notice about modern thinking. Everything must be new, different, exciting. The old ways are boring. Traditional is another word for backward. But boring doesn't mean worthless. Traditional doesn't mean wrong ✝️

There is wisdom in repetition. In knowing exactly what to do because you've done it every year since you were small enough to carry the water bucket with two hands. In planting what your grandmother planted and her grandmother before that. This is not boring - this is continuity. This is belonging to something bigger than yourself 🌾

The city makes people restless. Always looking for the next thing, the new thing, the thing that will finally make them happy or fulfilled or whatever it is they're searching for. They forget that contentment comes from roots, not from constant change. From depth, not from variety 🏡

I help my mother can vegetables every autumn. Jars and jars of tomatoes, pickles, preserves. It takes days. It's hot work, boring work if you want to call it that. The same process over and over. But in January when we open those jars, when we taste summer in the middle of winter, when we know exactly where our food came from and whose hands prepared it - that's worth more than any exotic vegetable from the store 🫙

My faith teaches me that there is beauty in simplicity. That pride comes before a fall. That what's new isn't automatically better than what's old. These lessons apply to gardens and they apply to everything else too 💐

I don't need interesting vegetables. I need reliable ones. I don't need exotic flowers. I need ones that come back every year without fuss. Let others chase novelty. I'll keep what works 🌻

Is stability really so boring that we must constantly abandon it for excitement?