Wild Grapes

Wild Grapes

I’ve grown to love gardening over the years. It takes me out of my head and puts me in the moment. It’s hard to space off and worry about much when you are digging up dandelions or planting rose bushes. You have to be in the moment.

Years ago when I first started gardening, I was renting a little house with a large back yard that had not been tended in years. There were these large “domes” of thick brown dead grape vines. I had never seen anything like it before. Some of the vines were as thick around as my arm. They had grown and grown around themselves until they had become these domed rounded masses. From a distance, I would imagine that they were hobbit dwellings.

It happened one autumn. Betsy said to me, “Mern, (she calls everyone Mern or Merna) we’re going to chop down those dead vines. I was sad somehow—the hobbit dwellings were to go. I knew she was right—up close without my imagination, the dead vines were not nearly as romantic—they were an eyesore.

And so it came to pass that for days we hacked our way through wild dead grape vines—some as thick around as my arm. Hacking and cutting away one day, the voice of the word we call scripture came to me and she whispered to me,

1Let me sing now for my well-beloved
A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.
My well-beloved had a (A)vineyard on a fertile hill.
2He dug it all around, removed its stones,
And planted it with the (B)choicest vine
And He built a tower in the middle of it
And also hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He (C)expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only wild grapes.
3"And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
(D)Judge between Me and My vineyard. (Is. 5:1-3)

Wild grapes indeed. My mind is deluged in my garden with parable and story and messages about garden and spiritual stuff. Since hacking through wild grape vine, I’ve never been the same.

The wild grape vines returned the following spring—green and sprouting new life from where my imagination had strained to see the old Hobbit dwellings made of dead vines.

But the story doesn’t end there… the story continues on today…

We moved and started a new garden. I often wonder if the grapes vines will ever yield good fruit?