Gemma planted pumpkin seeds last week. Boy are they great for the hope of a gardener! They were pushing their little leaves out of the soil after only three days. Now Gemma considers herself ‘practically an expert’ at gardening and wants to take over my garden. Maybe I should let here. My garden looks amazing, but bears little fruit. Unless you consider buckets of jalapenos fruit….which I don’t.

I actually planted very little this year. Our winter was so mild that most everything just hung on through those cold 64 degree nights. Okay, it got a bit colder than that, but…it’s the desert. We don’t freeze. My tomato trees, jalapeños, serrano peppers, and even strawberries are still going strong. Some have been hanging in there for more than a year. I did add a broccoli, zucchini, and watermelon to the happy family. Gemma’s pumpkin has it’s own little spot in a container to grow in.

I was thinking about the confidence this little seed brought to G and our garden efforts. Isn’t it amazing how much little things can mean to us?

When Ben was younger, much younger, my mom gave us one of those I Spy bags. It was a cloth bag, like a bean bag, with a clear window in it. The bag was fill with clear beads and a variety of objects and then sewn shut. The idea was that the child would spend a lot of quite time moving the bag around in their hands until they found each item listed on the little card that was attached. It was pretty awesome. My older kids loved it as well.

One of the items in the I Spy bag was a bean. I think it was your basic black bean. I remember Ben hunting like crazy for that bean. We had just watched the new Veggie Tale movie, Lord of the Beans, and Ben was a bit obsessed with all things Veggie Tale. Ben stuck with it and finally found the bean! I was so impressed! But then, he took some scissors and cut the bean out of the bag. That was the end of the I Spy bag. Apparently, he just needed that one little success and that was enough. He obviously didn’t see the point in losing the bean again in the bag and finding it over and over. Ben is like that.

That little bean was a treasure to him. He held on to the thing for days….maybe even a week….. before moving on to something else. The rest of us were totally bummed that our quiet little Sunday-at-church activity was in the trash. Ben didn’t care, he felt totally accomplished for finding that one small thing.

Ben gave me a small thing this week that really meant a lot to me. If you know my son, you know he is special. He does things his own way and can sometimes come across as uncaring. It took years for him to be willing to hug me goodnight. I take what I can get from him.

Sunday night, after taking a walk and talking to our wonderful bishop, Ben told me he appreciated me. That may not seem like a big deal, but for me it was huge. It was that bean I wanted to cut out of the bag and hold on to. It was an anchor I really needed right now. It was a little thing that was actually really big.

Little things…babies, hugs, cards, smiles…even beans when in the right setting, they aren’t little at all.

Cause I said so.

Photo credit: http://www.dreamtime.com