Sabbath Rest and Waiting

I want to make dill pickles. It is large in my mind. And my dill is tall and frothy in the morning dew.

But my cucumbers are only just flowering. Timing.

Not so much of a problem when things stand alone.

But when they must work together...

What do we do with those days when waiting for one vital element seems to promise a complete loss of all the potential we perceive in the present moment?

For instance, I look at my lone zucchini plant, and I shake my head over it.

A zucchini requires a male flower, a female flower, and a bee to cross pollinate if there is to be any hope of fruit on the vine. This one zucchini rarely has all three showing up at the same time. I tried prying open a female flower to pollinate "early" from the sole robust male flower. I watched for success. But the fruit struggled to grow even as long as my ring finger before shrivelling and yellowing. I had to accept that my taste for zucchini would have to be satisfied by another gardener's labors, and took my empty basket to the farmer's market.

So comes yet another life lesson from the garden. Trust in the face of squashed (pardon the pun) hopes. Do I get preoccupied with great visions of zucchini now, or do I agree to wait and learn what the bigger picture is teaching me?

"Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the soil." James 5:7

Maybe it is time to turn my eyes in another direction, focus on a different outcome, where it is possible.
Maybe it is a day for accepting help and embracing that good things are still out there--even if I must plop a different jar into the canner. If not dill pickles, then corn relish. If not my zucchini, at least my homemade zucchini bread.
And maybe, if there is nothing to put in the canner or the oven at all--no insurance that next winter I'll find a jar of summer on the shelf to pop open and savor its aroma;
well then, I'll just thrust my hand into the bean patch where I know of a rogue basil from last year's seed that is battling to hold its ground and keep its head up in the sunlight.
Maybe I'll break off a few of its leaves, hold them up to my face and breathe deeply, and then carry them in my pocket for a while.
One way or another--I'll find something beautiful, something to inspire gratitude...
At least for today.