I have very religious neighbors.  They always bless me, my dog, anything I do (“well bless you as you go to get groceries!”) and are generally happy people that live on some Earth where everything in their lives is directly touched by God.

Famine in Africa?  Sorry God is busy helping Gina find her lost rake, it’s somewhere in the garden.  War in South America? Opps, Gina needs God to make her spaghetti sauce turn out just right.

I don’t mind, as Gina and her husband have managed to raise a good crop of ex-Catholic children, that find their parents inclusion of God into every aspect of their lives rather humorous.  One of the children even joked that when her mom and dad make love, and cry out “Oh God!” they’re making sure He just feels included with that as He is with everything else they do.

One day Gina called me over to show me “God’s miracle”.

Angelic pumpkins…

It seems that Gina had planted her usual garden of flowers, and yet instead of flowers, pumpkins were coming up.  Well, there were some flowers, but they were over run with pumpkin vines.  Gina had not planted any pumpkins, and yet, God had made pumpkins arise.

I was a bit confused by this miracle.  As far as miracles go, this was a pretty good one.  You plant flower seeds, and pumpkins grow.  That’s up there with water into wine.

Gina knows her flowers, and everyone knows what a pumpkin seed looks like, so I knew she had not accidentally planted the wrong seeds.  Still, it seems to me that God would have no reason for changing flowers into pumpkins.  Gina was just in awe of the miracle of it all, and promised me a special pumpkin (or two or three, there were a TON of pumpkin flowers on those vines).

I thought for a bit and asked “Gina didn’t you tell me you were composting this year?”  Gina said yes and showed me her compost heap.  I then asked Gina if she had composted her pumpkins from last year’s Halloween.  Gina always has a lot of pumpkins and puts up a nice display for the kids in the area.

Gina agreed she had composted the pumpkins, but that those pumpkins had been “cleaned out” and wouldn’t have had any seeds.

I know when I clean out a pumpkin for Halloween, often a seed or two gets left behind.  I broke it to Gina I thought perhaps these were pumpkins from the compost pile and not heaven.

Gina was open to this new interpretation.  In fact, thinking about it, she became relieved.  “Does this mean, I can rip out all these pumpkin vines and make sure my flowers grow?”  I told her that I thought it would be safe, unless she could think of a reason God would want her to grown pumpkins in her flower beds.

Soon, we were ripping out the vines, and Gina was talking about how wonderful it was God gave us such a beautiful day to clear out her flower garden.

God works in mysterious ways Gina says, but pumpkins in her flower bed was just a bit too mysterious for her to figure out.

It should be noted, the next Halloween the pumpkins were just dumped in the woods.