The fairweather gardener

I am a fairweather gardener. There, I said it. Come Spring, the fabulously dorky sunflower-print clogs come out of hiding and my garden and I are the best of friends. But as the good weather fades, so does my enthusiasm.

I managed a lovely display of cyclamens last year and I got my bulbs in the ground. But there's a period between September and late October/early November when my garden is abandoned in favour of either my duvet on cold mornings or cosy fires and hot chocolate on cold evenings.

As I look out into the wilderness before me - final, too-ripe tomatoes clinging to dying branches and wondering when they will be rescued; marigolds that fight to cheerfully show off their rich ochre and orange petals; beans that long to be made into chutney before it's too late - I feel an almighty lump in my throat. But I just can't seem to fight the laziness within. It's horrible.

Late October, I suddenly feel the urge to go back out there. Not because I realise I'm a year-round gardener after all but because cyclamen are too pretty to resist and I suddenly panic that I'll miss my window of opportunity for bulb-planting - and then there'll be no surprises in Spring (seriously, aren't bulbs an absolute miracle? That's another post in itself).

So I head back out there and plant, thoroughly enjoying it ... and then head back inside to let nature run its course. And it does. After an initial soak with the watering can last year, I didn't need to water my bulbs at all. Rain and snow sufficed. And I remained mostly indoors.

As I looked out at my poor garden the other day, huddled in my fluffy robe; steaming cup in hand, I started thinking about the state of my heart.

A neglected garden is a sad thing to see. But it isn't the end of the world.

A neglected heart, on the other hand, is far more serious.

How often have I looked at the state of my heart with a lump in my throat and just carried on as normal, as if I think things will suddenly change? When I look at those about-to-drop-off tomatoes and fading marigolds, I think about the secret sins we harbour - anger, envy, lust, pride and the like, and wonder how many of us actively cry out to God for help and "grab ourselves by the scruff of the neck", as Elisabeth Elliot says.

A garden left to its own devices will grow wild. It may look deceptively beautiful, like a cottage garden. But real cottage gardens are tended to, weeded, watered. A truly wild garden is a miserable thing - underneath the surface prettiness, everything is decaying, dying, rotten. And so it is with our heart if we neglect to pay attention to it. Our sins may start as mere thoughts, so imperceptible we seem fine on the outside. But if allowed to run wild, these bottled-up thoughts will often spill into action.

It's okay to be a fairweather gardener, even if fellow tenders of the earth don't approve. But we cannot afford to be fairweather 'heart-gardeners'. There is too much at stake.

Do you have some gardening to do?