I once read a quote that said, “Before every flower blossomed, it had to go through a lot of dirt.” But it wasn’t until today that I realized the garden we built is a metaphor for our lives.
It seems that planting gardens is all the rage these days. I notice the chat around the water cooler, and even find myself pulling out my phone to show “how high my corn is.”
It wasn’t until he was leaving, and made the comment, “I’m afraid you’ll forget to water the garden…” And I jumped back with, “Please, I’m not going to let our garden die…” that I realized the garden is much more than just a place of serenity, and a fun project.
It’s true, watching the little baby Roma’s and Beefsteaks grow, looking exactly like the adult produce you’d find in the grocery store is exhilarating and creates a huge sense of accomplishment. But, the garden is so much more than that, and requires a lot more than a sprinkle of water on top each day.
I laughed when I told my Mom he thought I’d let the garden die and she quoted a hilarious movie line, “You killed our Love Fern!”
Preparation for the garden was beyond fun, no stress, no worries, just pure excitement; from planning all the fruits and vegetables we’d have, to reading book after book and daydreaming of fajitas we’d someday be eating.
Then we started to build the garden. We rented a little Rotatiller that was a complete joke, like trying drive across the country in a golf cart. That’s when we called my Dad to borrow the “real” Rotatiller. Two weeks, seven loads of dirty clothes and fourteen headaches later we had a solid foundation for the garden. Don’t get me wrong, the dirty part was fun but setting the foundation wasn’t a walk in the park.
See, once you set the groundwork for the garden; the soil, the rows, the garden stakes…then you have to plan to protect what’s inside, because it seems it’s suddenly very attractive to the rest of the world. That’s when we started building the fence, the fence that would keep out all the evils, and the deer, the dogs, and the bugs. There are a lot of things that want to destroy your garden and what you’ve built.
We finally got that all squared away, fence built, gate latched and tools set up inside (bug spray, liquid deer stop, etc).
That’s when we got to the fun part again. We were like kids at the Jelly Belly factory taking weekend trips down to the Nursery to pick out the peppers, fruits and vegetables. We laughed and joked as we set them out in rows and started planting them. We built a special herb garden on the side, just so we could zest up the wonderful plates of food we’d be having in a matter of months. Life was grand, the garden was taking off.
We tended to it, but the long winter and chilly weather made it easy to just let it “do its thing,” we gave it minimal attention and it seemed to just be doing fine on it’s own.
But what we didn’t realize is that things were happening at night, in the dark, under the surface that we couldn’t even see. Little bugs, and things of this nature, were creeping in through the fence, and slowly taking little bites out of everything we’d built.
The summer heat struck up, (after a terribly long cold winter with frost) and some of our plants began to get diseases, the diseases seemed to terrorize the garden, and it seemed like some of them would never recover.
Watering was no longer a thrice-weekly project, it became a daily project. That’s when the weeds started to flourish. Weeds need the same nutrients as the plants in the garden, and so the weeds sucked the nutrients from the soil, and stole the water from the plants. And slowly, as the weeds continued to grow, they drained the very life from the plants, and all that was beautiful and strong was beginning to suffocate and die.
And while the Nursery’s had rows of plants growing beautiful vegetables and fruits, and books with pictures made gardens seem easy and beautiful and fun and rewarding, we began to learn that no one ever said it would be easy. You begin to wonder if you garden has a fighting chance, and why it seemingly requires so much more effort than everyone else’s? You start to ask yourself if all that you are experiencing is normal, or if you should just cut your losses and go pick up a bag of zucchini at the grocery store instead (sure not as rewarding, but achieves the same end objective without all the work).
And while everything about the garden seemed to just fall into place at first, and the day to day seemed to come naturally, it still required constant attention and constant work. Surprisingly, just loving it on the outside wasn’t enough, a solid foundation wasn’t enough.
We had to take a step back and look at what was boring a hole into our garden, each plant needed its own amount of care and attention, every little piece of the garden required something unique and special. It wasn’t enough to sprinkle Miracle Grow, and cross our fingers, and outside advice from the Nursery and people with other gardens, didn’t necessarily solve the problems we were having within our own. The experienced gardeners seemed to be able to help give us some good ideas to start fixing the hiccups, offering suggestions without judgment.
The tomatoes needed wood props to help the vines grow, the strawberries and melons needed to be dug out, so that the water could pool around the base, the corn needed straw to reflect the hot summer sun and keep in the moisture, and the peppers needed to be left alone…they needed a little time to dig deep, settle into their roots and grow again, overwatering just suffocated them.
The hardest part was that sometimes we had to look at our own lives and schedules, and how much we were truly giving and adjust that, selflessly.
The garden truly couldn’t survive on just a touch of affection. When you start to take the garden for granted, and you stop giving it the full amount of attention it needs and deserves, the weeds start to over grow, the disease starts to bore holes too deep, and pretty soon, even the outside elements no longer want in, so the garden becomes something not worth fighting for.
But if you believe in it, and you selflessly devote time to it, and give it the tools it needs you can trust it will do everything it needs to do. Sometimes along the way a plant or two dies, its completely natural, but if the rest of the garden is strong, new seedlings will pop up and replace the weaker ones that died, and the second time around they’ll be better and stronger.
Two days ago I picked our first Sweet Baby Girl tomato, and a day later our second…today I noticed that our Angel Melon is the size of my fist. The garden gives me endless hope and optimism…no one said it would be easy, sometimes you have to overcome disease, sometimes the weeds become overwhelming, and sometimes things need a little something special. You must protect what you’ve built on the inside from what’s on the outside trying to come in, you constantly have to pick the weeds that try to invade because sometimes even things on the inside can destroy it.
And every day you must give it water, attention and love…not thrice weekly- in between your busy schedule- but every single moment, you must work on it.
And if you do, and if you succeed, the garden will be something that will flourish, and become strong and fruitful, and truly, will never die.
Our garden has been through a lot to get where it is, the foundation is strong, its future worth fighting for. I won’t let our Love Fern die…after all, watering is the easy part.
