By JACKIE TAYLOR | April 23, 2025

Gardening and life

It’s Tuesday morning, 3.5 plus-or-minus inches of rain are settling into the ground; dust isn’t quite billowing out from behind my car – give it a couple of hours and things will be back to normal again.

I watched a Fox News special where one of their people went into El Salvador’s notorious new prison, Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, built by President Nayib Bukele; Bukele now touts that El Salvador is one of the safest countries in the world after the super prison opened.

What struck me, I believe new United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was touring the prison, was the dark, hopeless look in the eyes of the prisoners. The prison supposedly can hold up to 40,000 prisoners; a place where not everyone gets a bunk, the lights never go off and they get fed minimally.

I’m not speaking to why people were in prison, right or wrong, I just saw the mostly brown, dark eyes that looked like the pits of hell were inside of the men housed in CECOT. The maximum-security prison was erected to try to make the lawless country of El Salvador a place where families, tourists, etc. would like to live and visit once again.

Now, kids to adults, with most bearing the tattoos of their favorite gang whether its MS-13, Tren de Aragua, or other organizations, living in cages where most will never see the light of day again.

I’m simply speaking on the plight of the human population there; poverty, family influence, peer pressure, safety – whatever the motivator moved those men into a place where they learned to kill, rape, maim, etc. over being decent human beings.

Society needs a place to house people that kill, etc. El Salvador made a huge investment and chose to clean their country up in a few short years. With Easter just past, the Christian holiday marking the return of Jesus from the dead after he was crucified on Good Friday, the lifeless look in the eyes of the prisoners gave a visualization of a life without Christ.

Back to rain, my garden was newly planted; in my not so infinite wisdom, I planted everything before the big rain came to give it a good spring dousing.

Well, that much rain, sometimes coming down in buckets, didn’t do my lettuce too much good as it is planted barely beneath the top of the soil. Other seeds that were planted deeper seem to have made it through the deluge pretty well.

My mind brought the prison and gardening together because outside influences caused conditions to be erratic in my garden, and, apparently, erratic for the humans that joined the gangs now residing in CECOT.

Rain splattered seed all over; rows of what would have been lettuce remain to be seen if they come up or stay in neat long rows. Humans that succumbed to the sins of murder, rape, etc. are scattered from society to live lives of solitude and remorse.

Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sin; rain grows crops, too much rain destroys. Sin destroys lives – but Jesus can forgive if we ask. Lifeless eyes seen in the holes on faces can become eyes with hope, hope of seeing heaven and not hell.

Meanwhile, my now unruly garden may produce food, it may have to be replanted in spots; humans can start over, they can be rehabilitated – at least spiritually inside that prison.

Spring is a wonderful time, but the dead eyes in those men’s faces haunt me. They are paying for their sins; but Jesus already paid fully, they just need to recognize that.