The Lure of the Garden

I'm definitely more of an animal person than a plant person - though I've come to appreciate plants much more these last few years. My mom, who loves to get her hands dirty in the garden, put a spider plant on my desk when I was a teenager to see whether I would take care of it. I can't really say exactly what it was that caused me to neglect that poor plant, but I think it had something to do with its inability to tell me its needs coupled with an overwhelming lack of functionality. At times I could muster up a little sympathy for the plant - realizing that it was basically dying of thirst - but that darn thing just wasn't pretty and I didn't really know what the heck it was doing on my desk.

Fast forward to 3 years ago. I'm in grad school, living in a progressive community with a huge farmers' market and lots of interest in producing and consuming local food. Growing vegetables and herbs that would actually be used as food to fill my belly - now these were plants I could get excited about! The first 2 years I grew a few herbs in pots. Some of them still perished from thirst, but I got some mileage out of the basil and oregano. It was obvious that these pots weren't going to cut my desire to bring forth nourishment from the earth. So last summer I joined a couple of friends on a community garden plot.

I admit that it seemed unbelievable to me that full-size vegetable-producing plants would ever emerge from the tiny seeds I was sowing. And there were a few uncertainties at first - are these tiny weed seedlings or my precious veggie seedlings? how much water do these baby plants need? how much space does a squash or tomato or lettuce need? In the end, we did pretty well despite our beginners status. By this time in July almost any garden that has been given the slightest bit of attention has tons of ripening veggies - and most in our community garden look like they are in the midst of the ongoing battle of gardener vs. weed. We had more zucchini, beets and peppers than we knew what to do with - but our tomatoes didn't fare too well due to a combo of early season drought and late season floods. I was so happy that I had finally grown something worthwhile and pleasantly surprised to find that it really didn't take too much effort to reap a nice harvest.

This year our tomatoes are doing better and I'm looking forward to having boat loads so we can experiment with canning and making sauce. In fact, my major gardening goal for this year is to minimize vegetable waste by freezing and canning as much as possible. Ah, summer such a time of beautiful excess. The yearning for a farm of my own is stronger than ever. . .