garden woes

For the third time since moving to the current state, I have planted a garden: cucumbers, squash, tomatoes. We have grown these vegetables back in NY in pre-kid days. For the third time, squash-eating bugs have descended and consumed the vines. I got abundant leaves, beautiful flowers, and even some little zucchini growing. Then the caterpillars and burrowing bugs came and consumed the fruit overnight until only a pulpy mess remained. The stems keep holding out, producing more giant leaves, more flowers, giving me hope, but the insides are rotting. No fruit survives to maturity.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/Portals/0/
Gardening/Gardening%20Help/images/Pests/Pest2461.jpg

I keep thinking how planting and not reaping a harvest is a biblical curse. A lot of effort, care, maintenance goes into gardening, but a lot of it depends on Divine Providence. Zucchini squash produces only male flowers until it reaches a certain maturity, or the soil is moist enough, or there are enough sunny and rainy days in the precise combination. Most of the advice I got was wait and hope that the weather conditions will be just right for both flower genders to be produced.

Today I had enough of watching giant squash leaves take over the whole garden bed, not producing any fruit while sucking up resources from the soil. Their healthful appearance belied the vines that they grew on, sickly and rotting, consumed from within. I yanked them all out, giving more space and more sunlight to the basil, rosemary, and mint. The garden bed looked empty, while the compost pile seemed covered with lush green leaves as if thrown out by mistake. But I know that in order to plant successfully, you need to weed, and those rotting plants turned into unwanted weeds.

All of this seemed like a metaphor for what's going on in my life. So many things appear beautiful and appealing on the surface, healthy and beckoning, while rotting on the inside. They will never produce fruit, and one is better cutting them off than letting them fester.

I was told by the shul's executive board to either trust their leadership, or to seek utopian shul somewhere else. This was on the heels of being told that the shul is not liable for any wrongdoing legally (nothing happened on their premises), while the protection of children and members "not in the know" is not their concern. I was not even given an opening to discuss my concerns and wishes for the youth program. Funds are being allocated for learning. How it is conducted and what results it produces, and under which conditions is none of their business. It has to look right. When it is rotting from within and you expose that, you must be the troublemaker, because you just do not understand how much effort has been put into tending this garden.

Some gardeners will not have the strength to pull out the plants that have turned into weeds, seduced by their appearance. Some garden beds just need to be walked away from.

As for me, let me know where I can find an utopian shul that welcomes children, takes their safety seriously, and fosters women's learning.