When you think of plagues, most of the time for Christians, our minds go to Moses and bloodied water, frogs, lice, grasshoppers, boils, hail, and death, etcetera.

As I worked in the garden this week, I kept thinking we actually deal with plagues every day. My garden has turned into one big plague ridden mess.

Some people buy morning glory seeds and plant them. They think the flowers are beautiful and they love the vines that can trail up and over fences and light posts. When I hear someone talking about planting morning glory seeds, my first thoughts are— Are you crazy??? They smother everything in sight, take all your energy to tame them down, and produce thousands of seeds that come back next year and take over the world.

The only time I like a morning glory is when one of my grandchildren pick a flower from one and offer it to me because they think it is beautiful.

I spent yesterday morning in the garden, three hours, pulling and burning morning glory vines. I took out a whole crop of green beans that were smothered in them. It went against every grain in my body to toss beautiful green beans into the fire I had burning to get rid of all those vines, but it would have taken me the entire day to pull those beans out of the entwined vines, then string, snap, and cook them. And, I just didn’t have that kind of time. Suddenly, canned green beans from the store looked good enough to me.

Morning glories are a plague for gardeners.

The next plague is fire ants. It’s a given, if you work in my garden, at some point you will be bitten by a fire ant. You are busily pulling out those stubborn weeds and then you feel the sudden burning pain of the bite. I’ve found white vinegar useful to douse on those plagues and actually find satisfaction in seeing them writhe in pain, as I watch them disintegrate (while I’m writhing in pain from their bites).

Another plague is snakes. We have a four foot blacksnake in our barn right now. My husband found it on the radiator of his tractor when he opened the hood to change the tractor battery. Of course it escaped into the barn where I keep my gardening tools loaded in a wheelbarrow.

We frequently have black snakes in our chicken house. When egg production slows, my husband starts looking for a snake—and finds one—full of eggs.

And, when you are working in weeds and vines up to your knees, and sometimes waist—you are constantly on the look out for snakes. You can’t let your guard down.

(My morning glory, fire ant, snake ridden garden.)

(Below is the after picture. I worked for three hours and still have a long way to go. I covered the clean beds with cardboard and a tarp to keep the cats out of them until I get ready for planting fall crops.)

One time I was chased out of the garden by a snake. I think it had just laid an egg, because we found one later. But, I moved a tarp and there it was. I ran. Normally, they stay where they are, but when I looked back it was still coming after me. I ran completely out of a shoe. I had on crocks, and I picked up so much speed I ran right out of one of them.

When I went in to tell my husband a snake chased me, he was like, “Yeah, yeah. You probably just thought it did.”

Guess what, when he went to check on the snake, it came after him. He killed it with the hoe he had taken and stopped making fun of me.

There can be plagues of people, that you somehow seem to attract, who want something from you and don’t mind draining the life out of you to get it.

There can be plagues of abandoned cats that show up at your house, and you feel sorry for them, and then get overrun with cats. And the animal shelter, in some towns, will not help you with your problem.

But just like with the plagues in the Bible—

“My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:2 (ESV)

What plagues are you dealing with today?