The garden is in disarray. The tomato plants are toppling over in their cages, the pumpkin vines are sprawling like a suburb, the beans are plowed under, the first rows of corn stalks are bent over and earless. It would be an easy sell to say no one cares about it.

But today I went to water it, and to pick. I came home with five pounds of potatoes, four onions, two peppers, a dozen ears of corn, a yellow squash, a melon, basil, carrots, and an armload of tomatoes. It took some digging, and poking under the leaves. I got dirty, and scratched. Yet lunch will be sweet. John ate the peppers whole, and roasted corn for us directly over the flames. The girls ate a few cherry tomatoes, and I will cut open the melon into crescent moons. The chickens went crazy over the cobs. 

John twisted his knee over the weekend and is hobbling on crutches. He clunked down the stairs last night and asked if I wanted the good news or the bad news. 

"Good." I asked with some trepidation. 

"The top of my dresser is all clean!" He smiled. His dresser has not been bare in some time. 

"And the bad?"

"The whole dresser fell over because I had too many drawers open. That's why the top is clear."

Because of the knee he will not be bending over soon, so the floor is, well, cluttered. I will probably scoop everything into a basket. 

My marriage often feels like it is in disarray too. Unfinished conversations clutter up the time we spend driving from one appointment to another, feelings get plowed under, fruitless disagreements hang like corn stalks. 

But if I am willing to dig, there are sweet discoveries for the finding. He made open faced cheese sandwiches with tomato slices as thick as the cheese. He offered to drive our daughter's car out to her in Chicago. He stayed up half the night last week making a cardboard Goliath for the kids to knock down in church. 

I will keep watering my marriage. Because I do care about it.