My garden is begun.
This weekend, I tilled a (very, itsy-bitsy) plot of land, mixed in top soil, and transferred 5 plants which my wife and I had potted last month into the ground.
I’m sure I’ve got the wrong pH for the plants.
I’m sure the fertilizer is wrong.
I’m sure they’ll die.
I’m sure if they don’t die, the deer and rabbits will eat them.
I’m sure I have no idea what I’m doing.
But.
I’m also sure that I know more today than I did two days ago.
I’m also sure that there is something fulfilling—on a primordial level—that comes from working with the ground. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “grounding yourself;” a meaning felt deeply enough that you don’t mind the cliche.
If you’ve never gardened before, try it. It’s different than planting seeds in a pot on your window sill. If you have no interest in it… I don’t know what to tell you.
I’m not sure why my wife and I decided to plant a garden this year. After all, we’d been talking about it for a decade. It was one of those many things in life that you just talk about… but don’t do. Maybe it was because I successfully grew a jalepeno last winter in our kitchen?
So, what have you started lately? Care to start a garden? We can compare notes as the summer season unfolds.
You won’t regret it.
Really.
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I love gardening — I’ve done it my whole life. Nothing like growing things. Smelling loam. Finding earthworms. Getting a little dirt under my fingernails.
I love the fragile nature of a garden. And the delight i get from the first tomato every year. Cheers to your garden. It’s a smile every day.
Hi Jason,
Gardening is indeed something that beckons to the primordial essence in each of us. When I was a kid in Clemson, SC, a really nice lady lived across the alley behind us. Her name was Miss Anderson, and she had the most beautiful garden, full of roses, and herbs and all sorts of things. She’d let us come over and help with the garden, mostly with weeding around things like mint. She was a sweet genteel Southern woman, who pronounced everything with at least one more syllable than required.
She moved to a retirement community and sold her house to the university, and they ripped out her garden to make a parking lot. My mom went over at night and saved some of her antique roses and planted them in our yard. It broke our heart, but it’s nice to remember her every time I see those roses in my parent’s yard.
As an adult, I have become a pretty avid gardener, and I owe much of my enthusiasm for it to MIss Anderson. One day, when I was in grad school, at my assistantship, I smelled mint coming from a dish someone was making down the hall, and wrote a poem that sums up my feelings about gardening. Hope you like it.
Greener Times
Into the kitchen I trounced,
smelling fresh green mint
Boiled over in the afternoon tea.
I reminisce…
aromatic images…
quiet green remembrances…
dirt beneath my fingernails
grass stains on my knees
quiet time to water thoughts
and taste them in the leaves…
this garden here is worn and pale,
shriveled, wilted, dry
the dirt is dust
the grass is brown
the water doesn’t flow
there is no loving gardener here
there’s nothing left to grow.
yet at the kitchen table
at a quarter after three
I sit and think
and reminisce
and smell that fresh mint tea.
It calls me back to greener times
and warmer thoughts
It turns my fingernail lint into garden ground
and makes my knees itch with grass stains
and my nostrils quiver for pollinated air.
It calls me home to my roots.
I have a gardener’s soul.
© 1993 Sean Cook
When I was growing up, my dad would have a vegetable garden and there is nothing better to eat than something just picked off the vine. When we moved into our house, about 17 years ago, I began flower gardening. I learned that I love digging in the dirt. Our front yard has more perennials than grass. It is such a hopeful time every spring when the plants start to come up.
This year we planted a vegetable garden (actually my husband did all the hard work) — tomatoes, cucumbers, romaine lettuce, red cabbage, zuchinni and red peppers. It has a high fence around it to keep out the deer (which have eaten many of my flowers over the years) and rabbits. I am excited to see how it progresses. I also planted some herbs in containers and they, unfortunately are not doing well at all.
Enjoy your garden. You might need to put some fence around it to keep the animals out.
@Frank—I should’ve guessed you’re a green thumb!
@Sean—This is the first poem someone has ever shared on my blog, and the first anyone has shared with me in a long, long, time. Thank you. I actually started to smell the mint tea by the end!
Glad you liked it. Wasn’t sure it would fly but figured the worst that could happen would be getting my comment deleted. If you need gardening tips, let me know. My first piece of advice is to start composting. As a coffee lover, it’s easy to get started. Coffee grounds are great for starting a good heap. Use unbleached filters and they are good compost material too. Gardeners.Com (Gardener’s supply) is a great source for stuff as well as gardensalive.com.
Best of luck with the garden. I haven’t started my vegetables yet. Just flowers and herbs. But will get started in a week or so (going to Disneyworld this week with the family). We have community garden plots in our neighborhood but no one’s using them now, so I’m going to plant up a storm.
@Penina—The fence is one of my spring projects
@Sean—Thank you for the tips… time for me to start drinking coffee!
Jason – I spent all day in the garden yesterday. You can see my work on Facebook. (I commented with the video link.) I love dirt. Enjoy yours. : )
I love to garden myself. The tilling is a nice workout, watching it grow is joyous, eating the harvest is delicious…the weeding…that’s builds perseverance.