Trace Elements: Little Attentions
Exact Change
TAILS: Growing nutritious, attractive, abundant produce is not a cheap venture. Gardening can be thought of as a business transaction requiring a large, but accurate exchange of essential elements. Unless the payoff is exact for each portion, adjustments and compromises will need to be made to complete the transaction
Let’s say to grow a beautiful, delicious, nutritious tomato it will cost $1,349,877.63 in garden “currency”. Anything short of this will affect the tomato we take home. This large sum is paid off by various nutrients and systems present and working in the garden.
Some things, like sunlight, carbon dioxide, microflora in the soil, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium come in large denominations. They help significantly toward the larger portion of the payoff. One may be a hundred thousand dollar bill (remember we’re talking “garden” money), another a thousand dollar bill, another a hundred.
But large bills cannot take the place of smaller ones. We also need fifties, tens, fives and ones. Yet even all these will not satisfy the exact amount needed. No amount of nitrogen or calcium will be able to satisfy the three cent requirement of sulfur or zinc. Small change is also necessary. Remember, the payoff needs to be exact to get the most of what we want. This is where the trace elements come in
Since the actual “cost” and “denominations” are unknown, we want to make sure we have a great variety of Garden Coins in the soil so it can make exact change.
HEADS: Character building requires a similar transaction. It, too, is very costly. Much of the price involves large expenditures of truth, grace, communion, knowledge, and many other things. But great as these may be they cannot take the place of gentleness, compassion, tenderness, dependability. We need them all.
Faithfulness in the “least” as well as the “greatest” is required of good gardeners.
But faithfulness without this is futile. Coin 12.
