Fruitfulness has a garden feel. Gardens are seasonal, and each season is fruitful in a different way. When the garden lies fallow, it is still busy, still working, still being fruitful, just not in the same way it is at the height of harvest. This reminds the homemaker that our lives are filled with different seasons: maid, matron, and crone. And even those three seasons of life have mini seasons built into them, just like how often we look at the agricultural wheel. Life has times of build-up and times of rest, times of plenty and times of want, times of inner focus and outer focus. When we speak of our fruitfulness, we remind ourselves that life changes and each of those changes has different work and different blessings.

Much of nature in suburbia isn’t tamed; it’s sterile. Even flowers have to be repotted every year because they’re not reproducing or reseeding. How can they? There are no bugs. Or they fall on fallow, impacted, poisoned ground. I’ve especially noticed a huge lack of ladybugs and bumblebees in my own flowerbeds. Our yards in suburbia are sterile. They are pretty to look at, like a piece of AI art; but there is no fruitfulness…there is no life.