Garden Loser

Let me start by saying that I haven’t given up. Despite the fact that our “garden” is essentially a patch of weeds with a few rows of 

(very delicious!) greens.

The conditions for gardening around here are, in principle, ideal. We live on a farm, for God’s sake. We have plenty of room and access to free horse manure. We have two beautiful plots, which have served, on and off, as gardens since the hippies and hillbillies lived here in the 60’s and 70’s. What we seem to lack is time and motivation.

On a positive note, we’re off to a considerably better start than last year. Last summer we were ready to go and full of grand plans until I saw one of the cats squatting in the freshly tilled ground and freaked out. I was a few months pregnant at the time and toxoplasmosis was weighing heavily on my mind. In addition to being irrational, I was feeling pretty crummy pretty much all last summer, so we just decided to let it go.

This summer, determined to make things grow, we set out to cultivate our dream garden. We bought a book, Barbara Damrosch’s Garden Primer. We borrowed a roto-tiller from a family friend. We bought the seeds—cukes, chard, green beans, etc. We even started some of them in those little peat pots, but somehow they just never got planted. Unfortunately, we lost a bunch of beautiful little seedlings during one of the crazy tornado-type storms that have hit our little corner of Blue Ridge heaven in recent weeks, and the ones that were spared just seemed to shrivel up and die. Guess it could have had something to do with lack of water and sunlight…hmm…

However, all was not lost. My stalwart husband planted three gorgeous, precise rows of different types of lettuce and one row of kale (a great love of mine), which we have managed to keep in fairly good order. He also got in two rows of tomato plants, God bless him. At the other end of the garden, my haphazard mother jumped in and planted a haphazard row of peas. I’m sorry to say I have all but given up on the poor little peas. It’s absolute chaos in that corner of the garden--impossible to determine where the weeds end and the vegetables begin. I’m sure the poor things are nutrient deprived--the few pods I’ve picked are pale and not appetizing in the least. Never fear little tomatoes, I won’t let them get you, too!

It just seems like there wasn’t enough time to get all those plants in the ground. And there’s just not enough time to get to all those weeds. I try to get out there, really I do! There are just, as always, so many distractions. The baby keeps rolling off the blanket I’ve set out for her, or starts fussing. I haven’t quite mastered gardening with a sling/carrier. I’m sure it can be done, but I haven’t yet found the key. Then there’s Henry who keeps trying to dig up his father’s meticulously crafted rows with his Tonka bulldozer or starts running off in the direction of the pond while I’m trying to get some work done. How on earth do other people do it?

But my problem is not just one of motivation: it’s also absolute cluelessness. How the hell do you dig a proper row? How do you plant the seeds? How on earth would you build a trellis? All this is especially tough for a spatial-relations challenged gal like myself. Whenever I have a question, Christian tells me to get out the book and see what Barb has to say. The Ever Lovin’ is crazy about Barb, but I’m ambivalent. There’s a smugness about her, which is no doubt precisely what appeals to my better half, who is also on some kind of higher plane of consciousness. And she makes hard things sound way too easy, which plays right into my inferiority complex. Barb suggests that to become a good gardener, one needs to learn to think like a plant. While I sometimes feel like my IQ has been reduced to that of a stalk of asparagus since I had kids, I just don’t seem to be able to get in synch with the vegetable kingdom.

But as I said, I’m not giving up. I like to think of this as our pilot garden. I am truly inspired by the deliciousness and the delicious cheapness of one’s own vegetables. Next year, we’re gonna kick ass, I swear! Til then, we’ll be relying on farm stands run by people who know what they’re doing—and eating lots of kale.