歪歪漫画

I heard it first while I was an editor of a couple small weeklies in central North Dakota.

A school superintendent had some complaints about parents 鈥� 鈥渉elicopter parents,鈥� he called them. They were trying to micromanage every moment of their children's lives including the decision-making of the school leaders, much to his dismay. Their goal was to protect their children from whatever hazard or teaching that they saw as a threat.

While I too find myself being overly protective of my children at times, this is the time of year where my wife and I dust off the pilot license, hop in our chopper and hover over the gardens like the world is out to destroy it.

Michael Johnson / Agweek

Rightly so (I tell myself.) My wife started planting seeds under LED lights in our basement back in February. Five months later, she is watching those plants blossom and start to bend with juicy fruit. All the work is about to pay off. But the ground is crawling and the skies are swarming with creatures that all want a piece of that garden鈥檚 pie.

Thursday we had a storm system come through that hinted at ping pong-sized hail for Fargo. By the time it got to us, that hail was marble sized but feisty as ever.

My wife hid under a blanket humming to herself to drown out the sound of ice smacking our home. Or at least that鈥檚 how I imagine it. I think there may have been some shouting at the heavens. After working months to bring that tiny seed to life, she was devastated at the thought of losing it all to a 15-minute storm.

I suggested she could go out and hold a tarp over the tomatoes if it would make her feel better. I think she may have plans of wrapping me in the tarp.

Once the storm passed, we stepped outside to survey the damage. Instead of damage we found that it was the most significant rain shower we鈥檝e had yet this year. We were blessed instead of cursed.

It got me thinking about how God has created things in such a way to have instinctive survival skills. He is in control.

We received our second batch of butcher chickens this summer with detailed instructions of how we are to protect them.

鈥淐hicks need to be kept in a warm place until they are fully feathered. The temperature at the bottom of the brooding area should be 95-100 degrees for the first two weeks and then reduced 5 degrees each week until chicks are a month old.鈥�

There are details of exactly how to feed the right nutrients and how to add electrolytes to their water to give them the energy they need to survive. It鈥檚 a lot to stay on top of. Oh, and don鈥檛 let your kids touch the chicks or they may get .

But then you have the mother hen who hatches her own chicks. She only uses her body heat to cover them, but the chicks run around in, could it be, 65 degree weather? And they survive? They nip water droplets off the grass in the morning and peck at flying insects for breakfast. They thrive without any human intervention in many cases.

And then of course there is our garden. We minimally and sometimes substantially till, weed, water, surround in fences, wage war against 13-lined ground squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits 鈥� all for the hope that we can raise vegetables for ourselves and perhaps have extras to sell at the market .

Michael Johnson / Agweek

Meanwhile, just outside the pearly gates (chicken wire) are many volunteer plants and young trees of every kind that have received no help from us whatsoever, yet there they are growing contently among weeds.

They grew without stakes. They grew without sprinkling. They grew without tunnels, cages and weeding.

Like the Grinch looking down at the Whos of Whoville, celebrating Christmas without gifts, you can be utterly perplexed at such a scene. You can look at these things of nature and puzzle and puzzle 鈥檛il your puzzler is sore, or you can know that sometimes conditions don鈥檛 have to be perfect. They just have to be right.

I鈥檓 not advocating that children be left to raise themselves in the wild. This world is full of rocks, thorns and the occasional bit of fertile soil. It鈥檚 up to us to find that fertile soil to become firmly rooted in. By all means, I鈥檒l intervene when danger is in sight. I鈥檒l use the knowledge I have and always keep gaining more. Doing so yields better results.

But sometimes, I need a reminder that I can鈥檛 control all things 鈥� and that鈥檚 often a good thing.