Inch by inch

Patience pays off

We finally have a garden! A bona fide vegetable garden! And maybe to you that sounds as exciting as assembling flat pack furniture, but it’s a big deal for someone who, for a dozen years, grew food like her life depended on it then left the farm and just…didn’t.

At the rental, where our six-month transition turned into four years, I had a shallow set-up with bad soil that only managed to grow a little okra. And maybe that sounds as enticing as used Kleenex, and maybe it’s careless to even hint at snotty tissues right now, because I love okra, and it already has a bad reputation that it doesn’t deserve, but it was truly something, that okra. For me, it was something.

One day, Rosella, may she rest in peace, the de facto head of everything on the street, said the neighbors wanted to know what I was growing in that bed. From a distance, the uninitiated could be forgiven for confusing okra with something more intriguing. And even though she might have been disappointed by my answer, not that she was the type to think highly of weed, or weeds, but because she wouldn’t have minded the excitement of a little scuttlebutt, she didn’t let on.

Okra on the left. Doobie doppelganger on the right..

Our permanent home was a welcome shift, not because of Rosella—whom I adored—but because the land was finally mine to do with as I pleased. So, I pleased myself with two raised beds and, even though I could never forget what I learned in my formative farming years, I hadn’t counted on the overshadowing trees whose roots sucked up the energy of my good intentions, prioritizing the tree’s needs, as well they should.

Successes were spotty. I made peace with that, sinking my hopes instead into a 4’ x 14’ community garden box where I had occasion, once in a while, to see Geneva, Rosella’s neighbor, the new queen of the street. And even though a small patch of earth a mile from home might sound as useful as a perforated condom, and truth be told, I rush in and rush out far too often, it has, at least, satisfied some of my desire.

And then a neighbor, who came and went in a big hurry of his own, had someone cut down all the trees in his backyard, even though I begged the contractor to try and talk some sense into him. And my soul ached for those trees, for their shadows, for the families of insects and animals that had lived among them, and the roots that had been their lifeblood underground.

Suddenly, sun! Sun! Rivers of sun rushed into our astonished ecosystem next door. And even though that might sound like finally reaching the unreachable star, especially for someone who has been trying to find her way back there for so long, I’ve learned a thing or two about why I’m better off with a slow, considered approach. So it’s taken two years to observe, to decide, and to finally inch forward toward something juicy, tender, verdant.

We have a vegetable garden. We mostly used materials we had on hand. I planted eight tomatoes in a spectrum of colors and shapes, and I tucked a pair of peppers at the end of that row. I have a second bed ready for all the plants that come next. It’s not a big space, but it’s here, and it’s enough to grow in at last.

~Elizabeth