I have not mentioned the garden recently, partially because I am concerned that I would end up talking about the garden TOO much, and partially because I have spent so much of my free time gardening. Alright, I'm kidding, somewhat - but, really, gardening in the summer takes an incredible amount of time.
And I don't want to post pictures - although I have pictures, plenty of pictures; I document the growth of my garden plants, my sunflowers, as if they were my children (which I do not have). Instead, I want to talk about gardening, because I want to convey some idea of what it's like, and pictures only show you what it LOOKS like. It's funny, because gardens are, traditionally, kind of about aesthetics; a garden is mostly judged by the way it looks, right? But I find that the best part of the garden is participating in it.
People do love to garden - it's one of the most popular hobbies in the U.S., and a growing (no pun intended) industry worldwide. Especially with the economies everywhere going to the dogs, people turn to local food sources...backyard gardens...the victory garden is making a comeback! I feel lucky to have a space, a backyard, that I can work; many urban dwellers have to grow food, flowers and herbs in community garden plots.
I went on a little tour of nearby urban gardens yesterday - using as a guide the 2008 Alex Hatch classic "Cracks in the Asphalt: Community Gardens of San Francisco - just for some inspiration. Mostly, they were full of slightly unkempt plots, and who can blame them? Two of the three were locked - a sad state of affairs; one lock was recently added due theft, as it stated in a classic "sorry, thanks" San Francisco way, clearly, on the signage referring to "vegetables gathered by non-members." Other information on the bulletin board (they all had good signage) mentioned that, should you be interested in a plot, you can submit your request to ________, but recognize there's a long waiting list.
A waiting list for working the earth. What can be said about that? So, I am very grateful for my garden, and I've been taking good care of it - well, at least I have been trying, but it's not easy. There's the work - nothing is quite as tiring as yard work: shovelling, weeding, planting...it's exhausting, and then sometimes there's sun and a little heat. I watched the cotton picking scenes from Places in the Heart recently (had never seen it before) with real compassion, because I can almost imagine how awful it would be.
In fact, that's part of the beauty of gardening - like many hobbies, especially those taken up later in life, the object is not to become expert at it - I mean, you start violin after 15 or so and you will never be any good, they say - but to learn what it is so you can truly appreciate it. The violin thing happened to me - I was way past 15 - and my teacher said, well, at this point, what you're going for is to learn enough to appreciate the great players. Gardening is the same way - I don't think I will ever be a master landscaper, but I am learning to appreciate the earth, how things grow, that cycle of life. I am able to SEE plants more - see more plants. I recognize herbs when I walk through a neighborhood; I can identify them. There's the agapantha - there's the wild strawberries (my foraging class has helped me spot wild wheat). And you know, sometimes, we can't see things unless we know what they are; our filters are so persistent, when you change them, it's amazing how things will appear to be there that you never noticed before. Once I paid attention to lavender, it was everywhere.
I am learning about the wonder of food, of creation of food, which comes from nothing more than these (in some cases, very) tiny seeds. There's soil and water and sun and heat, and voila: squash. Beans. Snow peas. Carrots. Lettuce. Sunflowers - sunflowers that get taller every day, I swear. Humans can't grow things like that; we can just grow babies, but we ourselves don't really know how, not like we know how to cook or replace a carburetor. As for gardens, we don't really do anything active: we can throw the seeds in and water them, but the plants take care of everything else. They just...grow. It's incredible. They get bigger and bigger, and then flower, and produce food. We can LIVE off of the food plants produce. We eat dairy and meat, yes, but we can live exclusively on plants if we need to, and we can't live exclusively on - well, what humans can generate (grow) ourselves, which makes it sound like I'm suggesting cannibalism as a possibly reasonable diet - which I am NOT.
It's fascinating how the plants know what to do. I'm sure I'm anthropomorphizing, but it seems like they have will or ability, sometimes - how do those snow peas know to reach out to the poles? They find 'em. Certain ivy secretes a sort of glue to help it adhere to the sides of, say, concrete walls. Sunflowers: they start all small, and you think, wow, those are REALLY small, they are never going to get as big as sunflowers do...as last year's did...or the year's before that did...no way. And then - they DO. They know just what to do, just how high to grow.
I'm especially amazed by the herbs, which are incredible. They have incredible qualities. I think they can make a difference in areas like aromatherapy (or even flower essences), but even if you don't agree with that, there's quite a case to be made for some herbal healing properties, in tea or tinctures. Green tea is pretty much certainly cancer-fighting; ginsing definitely helps with nausea. So many herbs support health in so many ways. And yet, all you need to is plant and harvest them. I find plants so very generous.
And then there is, after all, ALSO the aesthetics of the garden: in the end, the way it looks IS important, because nature is one of those pure, very beautiful things that you can't imagine being better, it's so lovely. And as a gardener, I get to experiment. I get to play around with how this plant looks here, or how these flowers look next to each other. It's like you're playing with the stars, or the arrangement of waves on a beach - you get to play with nature, and it's quite something.
Of course, there's a downside, which is - plants die. Some of them, annuals (and veggies, most of them), are supposed to die after one season, then come back the next from seed. Some are supposed to stay alive, but just don't - in the fog bank where I live, some plants just can't hack the cold summers. Tomatoes - even fog tomatoes - rot and whither. Peppers sprout but never come to fruition. Melons? Forget it. And many others don't end up doing well, except since I am a novice gardener, I don't know that when I buy them. I experiment, I read the labels, I try to place it properly (can I consider this spot as "partial sun," I find myself frequently wondering), and then I wait. Sometimes they die right away; sometimes they take longer, or, like my first lavender did, last a whole season and seem like perennials, but die anyway.
This is part of the charm - and annoyance - of the garden. Buying decor that dies off is annoying - I mean, if I had to worry about a couch or towel or pan "dying," it would be very inconvenient, yet that is just what happens when you have an outdoor room. That accent plant which is like a framed picture might die and that $7 is down the drain, which is why nice pots are so important, as you can just keep refilling them with new or transplanted plants. Yes, it can be fun - and rewarding - to move plants around. I don't do it too much, but sometimes they need a bigger container, or to be moved for other reasons. My patio and yard change constantly because I get new and move around old plants.
And I find that fascinating, for reasons I am not entirely sure of. It's the constant change - those sunflowers that were chest high on Friday are head-high on Tuesday. And just a few days later, as tall as me. Tell me that's not super cool.
So, sure, the plants come and go: they bloom or go to seed - they rot or dry out and die - they get transplanted and thrive - they grow huge - they stay the same size even though they should be growing - they blow over - they get stepped on - they get torn up in a cat fight - they get eaten by snails and they certainly get eaten by gophers - they get eaten by us, the humans. There are many fates for a plant in our garden. But it's all part of the whole thing: we have a little eco-system going on back there. Birds - bluejays and hummers, sometimes - and bees, from fuzzy bumbles to classic workers - and stray cats that kill and leave gophers on our lawn, and butterflies and moths and spiders and worms and snails and every so often something rustling around at night that I think is a possum or skunk but who knows? My point is, it's an amazing backyard, a garden of eden out there. At least, it is to me.
And I don't want to post pictures - although I have pictures, plenty of pictures; I document the growth of my garden plants, my sunflowers, as if they were my children (which I do not have). Instead, I want to talk about gardening, because I want to convey some idea of what it's like, and pictures only show you what it LOOKS like. It's funny, because gardens are, traditionally, kind of about aesthetics; a garden is mostly judged by the way it looks, right? But I find that the best part of the garden is participating in it.
People do love to garden - it's one of the most popular hobbies in the U.S., and a growing (no pun intended) industry worldwide. Especially with the economies everywhere going to the dogs, people turn to local food sources...backyard gardens...the victory garden is making a comeback! I feel lucky to have a space, a backyard, that I can work; many urban dwellers have to grow food, flowers and herbs in community garden plots.
I went on a little tour of nearby urban gardens yesterday - using as a guide the 2008 Alex Hatch classic "Cracks in the Asphalt: Community Gardens of San Francisco - just for some inspiration. Mostly, they were full of slightly unkempt plots, and who can blame them? Two of the three were locked - a sad state of affairs; one lock was recently added due theft, as it stated in a classic "sorry, thanks" San Francisco way, clearly, on the signage referring to "vegetables gathered by non-members." Other information on the bulletin board (they all had good signage) mentioned that, should you be interested in a plot, you can submit your request to ________, but recognize there's a long waiting list.
A waiting list for working the earth. What can be said about that? So, I am very grateful for my garden, and I've been taking good care of it - well, at least I have been trying, but it's not easy. There's the work - nothing is quite as tiring as yard work: shovelling, weeding, planting...it's exhausting, and then sometimes there's sun and a little heat. I watched the cotton picking scenes from Places in the Heart recently (had never seen it before) with real compassion, because I can almost imagine how awful it would be.
In fact, that's part of the beauty of gardening - like many hobbies, especially those taken up later in life, the object is not to become expert at it - I mean, you start violin after 15 or so and you will never be any good, they say - but to learn what it is so you can truly appreciate it. The violin thing happened to me - I was way past 15 - and my teacher said, well, at this point, what you're going for is to learn enough to appreciate the great players. Gardening is the same way - I don't think I will ever be a master landscaper, but I am learning to appreciate the earth, how things grow, that cycle of life. I am able to SEE plants more - see more plants. I recognize herbs when I walk through a neighborhood; I can identify them. There's the agapantha - there's the wild strawberries (my foraging class has helped me spot wild wheat). And you know, sometimes, we can't see things unless we know what they are; our filters are so persistent, when you change them, it's amazing how things will appear to be there that you never noticed before. Once I paid attention to lavender, it was everywhere.
I am learning about the wonder of food, of creation of food, which comes from nothing more than these (in some cases, very) tiny seeds. There's soil and water and sun and heat, and voila: squash. Beans. Snow peas. Carrots. Lettuce. Sunflowers - sunflowers that get taller every day, I swear. Humans can't grow things like that; we can just grow babies, but we ourselves don't really know how, not like we know how to cook or replace a carburetor. As for gardens, we don't really do anything active: we can throw the seeds in and water them, but the plants take care of everything else. They just...grow. It's incredible. They get bigger and bigger, and then flower, and produce food. We can LIVE off of the food plants produce. We eat dairy and meat, yes, but we can live exclusively on plants if we need to, and we can't live exclusively on - well, what humans can generate (grow) ourselves, which makes it sound like I'm suggesting cannibalism as a possibly reasonable diet - which I am NOT.
It's fascinating how the plants know what to do. I'm sure I'm anthropomorphizing, but it seems like they have will or ability, sometimes - how do those snow peas know to reach out to the poles? They find 'em. Certain ivy secretes a sort of glue to help it adhere to the sides of, say, concrete walls. Sunflowers: they start all small, and you think, wow, those are REALLY small, they are never going to get as big as sunflowers do...as last year's did...or the year's before that did...no way. And then - they DO. They know just what to do, just how high to grow.
I'm especially amazed by the herbs, which are incredible. They have incredible qualities. I think they can make a difference in areas like aromatherapy (or even flower essences), but even if you don't agree with that, there's quite a case to be made for some herbal healing properties, in tea or tinctures. Green tea is pretty much certainly cancer-fighting; ginsing definitely helps with nausea. So many herbs support health in so many ways. And yet, all you need to is plant and harvest them. I find plants so very generous.
And then there is, after all, ALSO the aesthetics of the garden: in the end, the way it looks IS important, because nature is one of those pure, very beautiful things that you can't imagine being better, it's so lovely. And as a gardener, I get to experiment. I get to play around with how this plant looks here, or how these flowers look next to each other. It's like you're playing with the stars, or the arrangement of waves on a beach - you get to play with nature, and it's quite something.
Of course, there's a downside, which is - plants die. Some of them, annuals (and veggies, most of them), are supposed to die after one season, then come back the next from seed. Some are supposed to stay alive, but just don't - in the fog bank where I live, some plants just can't hack the cold summers. Tomatoes - even fog tomatoes - rot and whither. Peppers sprout but never come to fruition. Melons? Forget it. And many others don't end up doing well, except since I am a novice gardener, I don't know that when I buy them. I experiment, I read the labels, I try to place it properly (can I consider this spot as "partial sun," I find myself frequently wondering), and then I wait. Sometimes they die right away; sometimes they take longer, or, like my first lavender did, last a whole season and seem like perennials, but die anyway.
This is part of the charm - and annoyance - of the garden. Buying decor that dies off is annoying - I mean, if I had to worry about a couch or towel or pan "dying," it would be very inconvenient, yet that is just what happens when you have an outdoor room. That accent plant which is like a framed picture might die and that $7 is down the drain, which is why nice pots are so important, as you can just keep refilling them with new or transplanted plants. Yes, it can be fun - and rewarding - to move plants around. I don't do it too much, but sometimes they need a bigger container, or to be moved for other reasons. My patio and yard change constantly because I get new and move around old plants.
And I find that fascinating, for reasons I am not entirely sure of. It's the constant change - those sunflowers that were chest high on Friday are head-high on Tuesday. And just a few days later, as tall as me. Tell me that's not super cool.
So, sure, the plants come and go: they bloom or go to seed - they rot or dry out and die - they get transplanted and thrive - they grow huge - they stay the same size even though they should be growing - they blow over - they get stepped on - they get torn up in a cat fight - they get eaten by snails and they certainly get eaten by gophers - they get eaten by us, the humans. There are many fates for a plant in our garden. But it's all part of the whole thing: we have a little eco-system going on back there. Birds - bluejays and hummers, sometimes - and bees, from fuzzy bumbles to classic workers - and stray cats that kill and leave gophers on our lawn, and butterflies and moths and spiders and worms and snails and every so often something rustling around at night that I think is a possum or skunk but who knows? My point is, it's an amazing backyard, a garden of eden out there. At least, it is to me.
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