We’d just about given up on our country garden, so ravaged by “critters” this year, in spite of my sending one ground-hog to its maker. The weeds can have it, except for a tiny plot that is still pumping out jalapeños. It’s just not worth gardening a spot you cannot sufficiently fence and watch, even when you’ve conquered the rainwater problem with a good rain-barrel system.
So we began to seek a spot to grow vegetables closer to our home. Home would be the ideal place, of course, but it lacks the eight hours of direct sun that’s a minimum for vegetables. It can support herbs and flowers; that’s enough for now, at least. Then, as fate had it, my employer came through with a plot at the community garden, open to faculty and staff by lottery in spring, available by chance in fall.
Second-season gardening has its pleasures and sadness. The growing season is short and the light is waning. Then comes the frost.
Yet the season started with a pleasant surprise. As soon as the weed-whacker roared to life and cut one swath across a plot abandoned by the previous gardener, I spotted a plump bell pepper, then another and another. Soon Fern and I were clearing our plot by hand, and we found several tomato plants, a cucumber vine, carrots, broccoli, and, of course, peppers. The weeds were up to 24 inches at least, but in four hours of toiling in the sun, we had the garden cleared, the plants staked, and quite a bit of produce harvested. Then we set about planting seeds for lettuce and spinach under screened boxes to deter birds and rodents, setting out seedling collards and more lettuce for a fall harvest until frost comes.
As we took advantage of our predecessor’s laxness, I wondered why would anyone walk away from a productive garden plot, especially one with compost, water, and mulch provided for free?
“Too busy….too much work,” I can almost hear the departed gardener saying. What nonsense. We all should have to work for at least some of our food. I suspect that in the not-distant future, we all will.
Not one hundred yards from the community garden, golfers spend hours wandering around after little white balls on a landscape that requires thousands of gallons of water daily to keep green. In the early mornings, as I carefully water my new garden, organized to minimize run-off, I see firehose-sized sprayers at work until the excess water runs off and down the abandonned, overgrown road that runs past the garden gate.
Two worlds meet there, one sustainable and sane, the other doomed and excessive.
In a coming time of permanent simplicity, both of Peak Oil and clean water, I think I know what the future will bring. It won’t be more golfing. But for now, I’ll just shrug, tend my plants, and pass on skills until the world renews itself again. Even as light wanes and the fall brings wrath from indifferent elements and an enraged electorate, that’s my seed-planting hope.
I’d rather live with hope than bitterness and rage, just as I’d rather work to grow my own food than to chase a little white ball around a chemically dose fairway.
