How does your garden grow?
Chloe observes all from her spot on the lawn, sporting her pink polka-dotted cat-eyed sunglasses and a thick layer of sunscreen.
“That was a tough job,” she
says periodically throughout the proceedings. She quickly dispenses of the
bucket of water she was given to play with, and joins us to dig up the lawn,
trowel in hand, “rescuing” the worms that have been unceremoniously dug up and
disposing of the many rocks that seem to be growing in the dirt.
Brian has a head that’s
shaved bald, so sweat just beads up on his skin and rolls onto his face,
stinging his eyes with salt and sunscreen. I think he sweats a lot. He insists
he sweats no more than anyone else; it’s just that everyone else has hair to
soak it up. Perhaps this is true. Whether it is true or not, though, I will
give him this: In the almost 12 years we’ve been together, he’s never smelled
anything less than shower fresh, even after a couple days of camping, even
after playing nine innings of baseball on Sunday mornings. I don’t know how he
does it, but I challenge any other lady to be able to say that about her man.
Brian puts on a hat to soak
up his head sweat, and soon, we’ve dug a beautiful square of dirt. We pound in
the four sides of the raised bed and pat ourselves on the back. Since our
previous attempts at planting eggplant and tomatoes in smaller patches right
next to our steps and directly into the ground resulted in cracked and
blighted-looking fruit, we fill the garden with the contents of four 30-pound
bags of lovely, rich, black garden soil that promises to feed our vegetables
for three months! And grow them twice as big!
“Why are there so many sticks
and stuff in there?” Brian demands. He sounds cheated. I don’t know why they’re
there; maybe for drainage. I have heard drainage is important in such matters.
He seems appeased by this explanation, so we smooth the soil out, making it
clump free and even. Suddenly possessed and overcome by the beauty by this wide
expanse of dirt, Chloe frantically hops over the raised bed wall and into the
newly dug garden plot, planting herself right in the middle. I ask if she’s a
vegetable and whether she wants me to fry her in butter for dinner. She laughs
gleefully at this proposition, but hops out.
We plant only the six
healthiest-looking squash and zucchini plants, plus some of the beets, a few
more beat seeds, and a bean plant that Chloe and I started on a lark in a
plastic bag in the window, but which is now growing like, well, a weed. We also
plant carrot seeds. I mean, we “direct sow”carrot seeds. I have to remember to
use the right lingo here. I am delighted that the carrots can be planted every
two weeks throughout the season to ensure an ongoing crop. We save the lettuce
for another day. Brian keeps telling me that his grandfather grew lettuce in
bathtubs, but somehow I think a bathtub on the lawn would raise the ire of the
condo people, so we’ll hold out for metal buckets.
I have visions—maybe
delusions—of our summer; of walking out the back door and plucking the
ingredients for that night’s dinner off of the bushes with a serene smile on my
face, looking like the beautiful, peaceful earth mama that I wish I could be.
Of making enough zucchini bread and jars of beautifully pickled beets and
whatever the hell you do with carrots to last us the whole, long, cold, winter.
I am a good cook, if nothing else.
“Is four-feet-by-four-feet
enough space to grow all of that stuff?” a friend asks me at a party later that
night.
“I don’t know,” I confess, to
a chorus of laughter. I wish my gardening career didn’t begin with so many people
laughing at my ineptitude. But even if the garden doesn’t end well, it’s not
like I won’t be able to feed myself. I can still drive to the grocery store.
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