“Tim” is fully
engaged. His hand flies up; he’s ready with the answer. This newest Master Gardener apprentice shares
his observations, his conclusions, and where we should go next with our work. He’s
read and re-read the text, and answered the homework questions with
confidence.
Today’s topic
in our Master Gardeners’ class is soils. Our teacher gets into it quickly,
leading us through the various dimensions, the biology, the chemistry, the
geology, and the mystery of it all. And Tim is in the middle of it, soaking it
up, loving the complexity, and engaging in the thinking our teacher is calling
us to do. His mental wheels are turning
fast.
I’m Tim’s
mentor, and today, a tutor, a teacher’s aide.
My work is easy, a few words of encouragement, an occasional
observation. I sit back and just enjoy
him for who he has become.
A few years
ago, he was lost. He’d done his required
work in the youth prison, even finishing high school and then helping
others. But, nothing fired up his
passion, and life here was becoming just a matter of serving out the rest of
his sentence.
Then, he
discovered the garden, and the mystery of cultivating that is the joy and the
passion of gardening. Wonderful things
happened here, and he could be a part of that.
He could be the magician and the scientist, the expert on various bugs
and herbs, growing into a nurturer and a teacher. Tim was becoming the plant, sending out
roots, spreading his leaves, and thriving in this newly discovered soil in his
life.
Knowledge and
the ability to be a part of the wonders of nurturing life, and exploring the
unlimited world of plants and bugs touched his heart. He belonged in this work, and it fed his
soul.
Now, the Master
Gardeners class is his focus, and he has embraced it with everything in his
being. He is in the midst of this class
of questioners, deep thinkers in the ever expanding world of common, every day
dirt.
I help him work
through the math formulas and problems for the fertilizer questions. I watch
him realize that the dull, abstract work in his math classes is nothing like
the excitement of learning how best to fertilize his garden, and make his
plants grow.
“This is fun,”
he says.
He laughs then,
shaking his head.
“I never
thought I’d say that math problems are fun.”
We look at the
slides of plants with various deficiencies from their soil, and talk about how
to correct that, improving the plants by improving the soil and the nutrients,
applying our newly found knowledge and thinking. He is becoming the botanist, the chemist, the
scientist, the better lover of life itself.
He smiles, he
scribbles notes, he’s totally absorbed in what we are doing, and where this
class is taking him.
Tomorrow, he’ll
be out in the garden, working his magic, growing his roots, growing into a
healthy, complete man.
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone
reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy
of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk
curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human
spirit.” –E E Cummings.
--Neal Lemery 4/19/2016
