The northeast corner of my father's farm in northwestern Minnesota.  It would be the last field to be planted.  The season was getting late, but he knew what would go into that plot of land: FLAX.  Dad liked to have a field of flax.  It was a crop that matured late, so when we rushing to keep up with neighboring farmers who were tending to barley and oats and wheat, the flax would still be relaxing into blossom.  And flax, one could not deny, was PRETTY:  as a flax crop matured, it would turn an entire field to a quiet, relaxing color: a bluish-light purple.  I would not get to see "my" corner of the farm become this quiet pre-harvest loveliness, because about mid-summer I would be wearing a soldier's uniform and spending early August sweating through the hills of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  But I would certainly keep the sight in my imagination, come September.

A number of years passed before I finally drove past that corner of the farm. Since the summer of "my" flax field, a number of things had changed.  But one thing was still the same - sort of.  The field still blossomed, not "blue" but YELLOW;  My brother-in-law had rented it to someone who planted, not flax, but sunflowers.  What stunned me was the colorful vividness.    

Another "fast forward":

I was working on an essay, trying to find the sources of Joseph Sittler's "Theology of Earth."  Sittler is, himself, remembering a farmer, a leader, of his father's parish.  The farmer is protesting Sittler's father's attempt to allow the county to bring in a person with "credentials" to come into the community to "educate the farmers" "with new-fangled" ideas.  Sittler's father addressed the farmer, "Karl:  What is the word with which we begin each service of worship"". The fellow said, "The earth is the Lord's and everything therein."  And Sittler's father replied, "And what the man from the city wants to teach us about is to keep the hedgerows, the space between the fields, because that gives other creatures, such as bugs and birds, a place to live.  You might say, God wants you to keep a 'picture frame' around the property of which you are a steward.  To keep that picture-frame:  that's called 'stewardship'".  

It's been more than fifty years since the summer I spent finishing off the the flax field that gave me so much satisfaction.  What I find so interesting now is that one of God's values is "beauty": and that "beauty" is one of the values that we are invited to hold high as we consider habitats for pollinators. It's an old value; but it continues as one of the solid values of stewardship.  And It's not the size of the plot of ground of which we are invited to be good stewards:  even a small plot of ground in the middle of an urban parking lot is enough to require the careful stewardship of making it beautiful.  

Allan