The Deacon's Bench - August, 2009

When we bought our house twenty-something years ago I decided it would be fun to have an herb garden. I sent away for some herb plants and in a week or so the sage, thyme, chives, rosemary and a few other wonderfully fragrant herbs arrived. So did the mint.

Now, if you’ve never grown mint and happen to plant some in your herb garden willy-nilly, you will find that in a few short years your herb garden will have become your mint garden. You see, there’s a right way and a wrong way to plant mint.

An invasive species of unparalleled determination, improperly planted mint will creep all over your garden and destroy everything else in it that’s not mint. It will go into the lawn, behind the shrubs and, if you let it, into the house, past the dog’s cage, up the stairs and all over your bedroom too.

The trick with mint is to plant it in a pot, so that its rhizomes can’t reach out and spread. Mint knows this trick, however, and even if you plant it in a pot, eternal vigilance is the price one must pay for a decent herb garden that happens to have mint in it. You simply have to get out there on a regular basis and snip off those nasty little runners that want to creep out of the pot and all over the place.

Last weekend I was excavating my herb/mint garden, with a mind to start all over again properly. I was thinking largely unlovely and unprintable thoughts about mint, when it occurred to me that God was teaching me yet another lesson about life. “Look Tim,” God said, “Your sinful habits are like the mint, except they don’t smell as good. Once you let something like that get a toehold, they’ll take over your whole soul if you give them the chance. And just as you’re finding out with the mint, it’s hard work ripping them out.”

“No kidding,” I replied, stopping the tiller for the umpteenth time to clear out the mint roots from the tines. “Yes, Tim,” and you’ll also find that the price of a happy soul is constant vigilance.” I was puzzled about this. “Does that mean I have to be a navel-gazer, constantly fearful and on the lookout for sinful habits?”

God laughed the way he does when we say stuff like that. “Not at all, Tim. What I mean is that you need to be constantly vigilant for my presence in your life. Trust me when I tell you that I know in detail what I have made and Tim, I love it all, including you and the mint.”

“It’s when you’re not vigilant about my presence that the roots of sinful habits can get a toehold. If you’re vigilant, we can nip them in the bud, just the way I know you’re planning to do with the mint in your new herb garden.”

“Yep,” I told God, “This time I’ll get them all as soon as they show up.” “Right,” God said, though I sensed that if God had eyebrows they would’ve been raised just then. “Stay in touch,” he said. I agreed, and that’s where we left it.

Deacon Tim’s Mint Pesto Recipe #12C

1/4 cup (packed) fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup lightly toasted pistachio or piñole nuts (who’s kidding who? ANY nut will do.)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled
Coarse salt
Throw in blender and blend. Put it on something and eat it.