This may sound absolutely crazy but it is totally true.
There is a major intersection I need to pass almost every day. On the corner is a restaurant–and old fashioned inn. They have a pretty garden which does a lot to brighten up an otherwise dismal urban corner, full of concrete and speeding cars. This time of year that garden is full of sunflowers.
Every time I pass, I comment on them, exclaiming to Max (my perpetual passenger) “Look! Look how spectacular these sunflowers are!” These particular ones have flowers the size of my head. Their stems reach at least eight, maybe ten feet tall, maybe even taller. I have never gotten out of my car to stand along side them (though I have secretly longed to do so). Its not good “busy intersection” etiquette. And the garden is private property and all that.
One recent morning, Max and I passed by in the early morning. The intersection was not terribly busy, even though he and I were running late. As we passed those sunflowers, whose heads are now bowing, whose leaves are now yellowing, I said one more time, “Look Max…Look at sunflowers.”. From the back seat a tired Max piped up. “Mom, you always are telling me to look at the sunflowers. Why?”
“Well,” I said, “Because they are beautiful.”
“But they are dying” he said. “”Look, that one is almost dead”.
“They are not dying”, I said. “They are changing. They are giving their power back to the earth, and they too will go there and their leaves and roots and decaying bits and parts will be food for the plants who grow next. And next year they will return again. There are always sunflowers here every summer.”
We turned the corner and I took one last fleeting look. “Oh how I love them,” I sighed. “The sunflowers are so beautiful.”
And just like that a voice strong and clear but gentle and sweet rose up from my heart and whispered to me, “And the sunflowers think you are beautiful too!”. I immediately, without warning started to cry.
Several years ago, during the height of my grief over my marriage, I would go out to my yard an sit with my back against the oak trees. It was the oak trees that initially attracted me to this house–their ancient arms seem to embrace the whole property. This space feels held, if a little shady. It is always several degrees cooler up on my hill than in the rest of town. And I always feel protected. Whenever I would lean my aching back against that tree, I felt like a little girl leaning against her strong grandfather. I knew I was safe.
I have been thinking a lot this week about our relationship to the plants around us. Perhaps it is the fact that I am keeping a garden now. My veggies are not just something that show up neatly stacked at the grocery story, or charmingly arranged at the farmers market, but they are growing in the ground before my eyes. I planted tiny seeds, watched with surprise when shoot grew, was amazed as I saw the plants grow up before me. For the longest time my chili plants seemed to do nothing and then all of a sudden after weeks and week of heat they took off to the races and are now laden with fruit. When I pick them, I realize that something living, something which is always changing, is now changing to the point where it can share with me. It drew some power from the earth and now offers gifts. I will take those gifts and consume them and the power will be transformed. I will be transformed and the cycle will continue.
What i do with that power is up to me. Will I be as generous as the cherry tomatoes that never seem to stop? Will I be as sweet as the carrots which keep surprising me with the size of their carrot roots/hearts? Will I be as beautiful as the sunflowers that take my breath away no matter how heavy the traffic? Will I offer shelter and protection like the oaks.
Some people say that one of the hardest part about making a dream come true is finding the space for it to be born. Is it silly to say that about gardening too? It is certainly true about my dream of growing my own food. I think the hardest thing I will do in my garden this year is to create the blank canvass–to build that elevated bed where my veggies will grow.
I have to be honest, it is wasn’t for the encouragement of my friend (and the pile of brightly colored yummy looking seed packets on my dining room table) I might have given up before I got started. The idea of having to build a bed felt like a scary and uncomfortable amount of work for this fully employed single mom.
The process of building an elevated bed when spelled out in whole felt like so much that I wanted to simply go back to bed and wake up for the farmer’s market. Railroad ties, weed barriers, wheelbarrels of compost and topsoil… OH MY! But my peas wanted to be planted and I was already 3 days behind the Saint Patty’s Day “deadline” for getting them in the ground. So Friday morning, fresh off a red-eye flight I found myself in the backalley moving dirt.
To read the rest of this story journey on over to Backyard Bounty where I am blogging about my first year as an urban farmer!
Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a farmer. I don’t know where it comes from, this yearning to get my food from the land. Certainly it wasn’t my parents. Just a generation away from struggle they did everything they could to convince me that the “hard work” was more than I bargained for. I grew up thinking that my dream of living my adult life in Iowa in a big white farmhouse with sheep and pigs and fields of wheat and corn and fresh green veggies would simply leave me overwhelmed, overworked, poor and miserable.
And from a political and economic standpoint, they may have been right. Growing food however called to me even as I grew. Some 15 years ago when Juan and I first moved in together, our apartment had a front yard which faced south and was bathed in sunlight. Together with our upstairs neighbors we planted herbs, flowers, and a few tomatoes and chilis. We grew lettuce in a bed in the backyard. We only lived there one year. and that was a year of lots of learning through failure. We didn’t haul in a big harvest but we did play in the dirt and the potential was intoxicating.
But then, we moved into the house where Max and I currently live. I love my house for many reasons but we almost didn’t buy it because of the lack of sunlight. it is surrounded by ancient, wide oak trees. The lawn has all but disappeared and in its place grows a thick carpet of green moss. Mushrooms and hostas and ferns thrive here. Veggies do not.
So I joined a CSA, found a farmers’ market, paid more for the organic label at the grocery story and gave up my dream of growing my own food. Well, rather, I tucked it neatly out of site.
Two summers ago I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and my dream lifted her head and started poking me. It seems so right to grow what we need in our own backyard. Many of my friends, much of my community have followed in the footsteps of Kingsolver and they are growing their own food. I have sat at many a table with the most delicious beets, the sweetest carrots, with salads picked right before dinner. I have shared in their bounty, bringing home extra cucumbers, tomatillos and peppers. I have made sauce from the tomatoes they could never possibly use. I have been a grateful consumer. But their generosity has only fueled my sense that something was out of place with a garden out of sight.
After years of bumping my head up against my dream of becoming a healer, I decided to take a bit of mondo beyondo advice and turn my attention to some others.
That is why, this year, I am finding a way to the garden. Magic has arrived in the form of neighbors offering unused but sun drenched space in the alley behind their homes. I am building beds where beaten down weeds and ivy and trash cans once stood. I am borrowing a corner in my friend Edamarie’s yard and setting up an elevated bed. And I am experimenting with growing my own food, if not in my own backyard, then in the forgotten corners of our community.
It started this winter, when January winds were still blowing, when I gathered with a gang of more experienced gardeners. I was a total beginner, out of my league but somehow in the sisterhood of these wise women I felt as though I could find my way. It was worth a try.
This Friday, my seeds arrived. I spread them out on my table and basked in all the promise that they offer. Promise of healthy food. Promise of heartbreaking loss due to bugs, or birds or drought. Promise that I will learn to accept what is, whether its a bumper crop of tomatoes or lost crop of peas. Promise of hours in the dirt, digging, hoping to coax something from the land. Promise that no matter what I bring home I will learn something, not only about the art of gardening but also about myself. Promise of adventure. Promise that, seed by tiny seed, I will manifest my dreams.
I will be blogging about my first year of being a farmer over here at Backyard Bounty, the web-home of Edamarie’s business by the same name. Edamarie has launched an amazing business to help people like me grow their own food. Her blog, which just launched this week, will be an amazing resource and a source of inspiration. I hope you join us over there as we watch my garden (and dreams) begin to grow.
