It should put me in my place. That's why, I think, gardening quiets the soul and is a kind of prayer. We're put in our place. That grand old Genesis story says that the first humans were assigned their place in the beautiful new creation. They were told to tend the garden, promote its bounty.
Gardening is prayerful because it's that first duty, writ small.
But a garden is best. We tend a potted plant by bending over it, and that better mirrors God's role in creation. But my vegetable plot I must work from inside, a stronger reminder of how I fit in living creation. In it, of it, dependent on it. I'll soon kneel by the same furrow again to fumble among luxuriant leaves, gathering a handful of pods at a time and, holding the plant steady with my other hand, snapping them free.