In April I checked to make sure may name was still on the waiting list for a pea patch in the Proctor Community Garden. It was. I added my name to a community garden closer to me, but wasn’t given much hope.
Then I got a call from church—they were resurrecting the church garden, and I could have a plot if I wanted. I did, but it was already early June. Too late to do much with seeds. So I started buying vegetable starts. I have three roma tomato plants, four zucchini (yes, that may be three too many, but I really like zucchini), two types of cucumbers, acorn squash, cauliflower, and bell peppers. Then there are the herbs—basil, peppermint and lemon thyme. I wanted sage, but couldn’t find any plants or seeds.
The one thing I planted by seed was lettuce—which I have had little luck with to date. But I have started more lettuce in my window at home, and will transplant it in a few days. I figure that if I work it right, I can have lettuce from late July thru September.
What do I hope for? Enough produce to make the weeding and watering worth the effort. Meantime, had a great dessert of local raspberries and nectarines (which were at the peak of ripeness) over pound cake. Yummy. Must get some local berries to eat regularly . . .
But planting a garden brings me to another thought. The planting of a garden is an act of faith. You plant seeds (or seedlings) and water them. Weed around them, and maybe give them a little plant food. But they are at the mercy of conditions you have little control over: animals, insects, weather, and other humans.
When you plant a garden, you are living in faith and hope that in a few weeks or months you will have this wonderful bounty to show for it.
My father was a gardener. When he bought the property he built the house on, he actually purchased multiple plots of land, so he could garden. The land was rocky--every spring one of us kids would walk in front and another would walk behind dad as he went through with the rototiller; each of us carried a bucket to collect rocks. By high school, I was sure that we should have picked every rock possible out of that garden, but year after year we still picked rocks.
But we also ate incredibly good food. Fresh lettuce, home grown tomatoes, beets and carrots, corn and potatoes. And cherries, grapes and plums from our own trees became jams and jellies that we would ear on toast in the winter, savoring the flavor of summer.
My dad was a child of the depression--born days after the 1929 crash of the stock market, to parents who farmed at the edge of the dust bowl, he understood the value of being self supporting.
So in my garden, I find memories of my dad. I talk to him, knowing that somehow he would approve of my feeble little attempt to grow vegetables (well, everything except the peppers--dad hated peppers). And I keep the faith--that there will be fresh tomatoes, wonderful lettuce, and zucchini enough to share with everyone.
Please God, help my garden grow:)
BTW, a great read on the topic of gardening (if you are looking to laugh) is "The $64 Tomato". Re-read it after planting my garden, and laughed out loud in public (reading at the park). His trials and tribulations with his home garden/farm will make anyone who has ever gardened laugh (especially if you have done battle with deer, ground hogs and squirrels over first rights to what you grow!). William Alexander is the author.
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