Ever since I wrote my blog about Comfort Farms I have been pondering what makes gardening such a healing experience. I wanted to share a few thoughts about that.
I also think that it's time to start some seeds. It's time for gestation. I need to get going. Cheaper to start seeds on your own than to buy plants already started.
I always plant three seeds in each cup of dirt; one for the father, one for the son, and one for the holy spirit. Three seems to be about right because usually only one or two seeds will germinate, but sometimes I hit the trifecta and get three seedlings, and I feel as if I had given birth to triplets.
I grew up wondering why my silly parents wasted their time gardening. I grew up resenting Mom's telling me to water the garden, or weed the garden. I wondered why my father -- who normally wore expensive suits to his office in the bank, and who smelled of expensive cologne and multi-million dollar deals -- why he hurried home to buy cow manure and spread it around the garden, and why he liked to wear old clothes and get dirty.
Why did my parents choose to get dirty and sweaty and go to all that trouble when they could just get in the car and go to the White Store and buy vegetables? I was such an ignorant child. I also didn't like vegetables.
I didn't understand it then.
"In search of my mother's garden, I found my own." -- Alice Walker
Skip ahead many years, to 2005, when my mother and daughter and I moved into this house. There was a pitiful little garden plot adjacent to the back patio. Mom suggested I plant a garden, showing my daughter how to grow vegetables.
I was game to try it, but also somewhat fearful. After all, I had watched my parents struggle to grow veggies utilizing their considerable intellects, and my dad's muscle, and the collective genetic wisdom of generations who had gone before. My mother spent World War II living on a huge farm my grandfather managed. My dad grew up just a few miles from the family farm owned by my Henderson great-grandparents and still operated as a farm until the 1950's, by my great uncle. Dad had seen the hard work that goes into farming.
Generations before me farmed not for fun or for instruction, but because they wanted to eat what they grew. Farming meant food on the table. Growing food -- including pigs and chickens -- was a necessity.
above, my great-grandfather
I gave it a try. I had nothing to lose, except the cost of seeds and soil.
A few months later I watched my daughter pick a tomato, rinse it off with the hose, and stand there outside and eat it like an apple. I felt a surge of pride, joy, and relief.
I also felt pity. In a Russian orphanage, fresh fruits and vegetables are rare, and she had probably never eaten a fresh tomato like that, warm from the sun.
Growing a child is much harder than growing a garden.
Becoming a first-time mom at the age of 42, to a child nearly as tall as myself, who spoke almost no English, was the most terrifying thing I had ever been through. We struggled mightily for a couple of years there. It was a huge adjustment for her trying to fit into an American family, and a huge adjustment for me, trying to understand her needs.
"Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow."-- Zora Neale Hurston
I remember feeling a surge of incredible joy when I saw those little plants in my garden flourishing that first year. Excited as a child, I delighted in each bloom, each bud that turned into a tomato, a squash, a melon.
There were so few things in my life that I had any control over, but I had control over that little garden, at least somewhat. I couldn't control the sun or the insects, but I could control the water, the fertilizer, the harvesting.
I could pick what I grew and each bite tasted of sunlight and goodness.
Gardens are filled with life and gardens give life.
Gardens even give life when they die, and the old plants decompose and add their nutrients back into the soil.
This year, my children are grown and my mother is in the twilight of her life, but I will still plant my gardens. I will rejoice in the summer showers that nourish my gardens. I hope to have enough produce to share with my neighbors -- which is a big part of the fun of gardening, to me, the sharing.
I will thank God that I am still able to garden, and thank God for the privilege of watching that magic happen, just outside my back door.
"A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust." -- Gertrude Jekyll
