Layered Seasons

I love celebrating new years in the middle of a calendar year, those anniversaries that mark new beginnings amid a frenzy of life. Such is our wedding anniversary that comes smack in the middle of tomato season. And onion curing time. And during the frenzy of fall plantings and sowings. And right before any plums that didn’t split will be consumed with moans and groans.

It’s these anniversaries that feel like walking through an open door into a clean slate for me. I suddenly have a new anchor, the memory of our wedding in Oregon, with so many loved ones present who are now gone and so many loved ones who had yet to be born that are now adults or younger. And in placing myself at that moment in time every year, it somehow renews my passion for this garden, for this space, at a time when I feel like I can’t go on.

I recognize what I do is aspirational for many. Maybe that’s what many people enjoy about it. Frankly, it’s aspirational to me too. I’m laughing as I write this, because it’s as honest and raw as I can be with you. Every time I succeed at gardening, preserving, planning and planting, in many ways it feels like success for the first time, even when I’m doing a familiar task like canning cucumbers or tomatoes. Because every year is a first-time in some ways.

And add to that the layers of our real-time experience and decades of dreams that finally have turned into our reality and we often ask ourselves, “What were we thinking?” wanting a garden this large. Because, we achieved it. This dream we co-conspired at a friend’s wedding in the spring of 1998, when we were first dating. We made our way to this incredible garden with espalier fruit trees ringing the perimeter and immediately said this is what we wanted someday. It even had, if I’m not misremembering, a central pergola and seating area. That kitchen garden at McMenamin’s Edgefield in Troutdale is our inspiration for our garden dreams.

And I do think our garden is the right size for a family of four who wants to eat a whole heck of a lot of their own food year-round. How much actual growing space do we have? I don’t know, because we haven’t measured our raised beds yet. But it’s a math problem I’m posing to the boys to calculate for me before they go back to school. Its size is best measured in the amount of potatoes and dry beans we need to get us through those long winter months. That’s how we measure the success of our garden planning.

So what is my point? I think to take things slowly, to find ways to renew your love amid the exhaustion and very real garden fatigue, and to really enjoy the precious time you have in each season. That is exactly what this anniversary this week has done for me, reset my enthusiasm and joy amid my most exhausted time of summer. I try to avoid the garden some days because there are so many tasks and just ME, mostly, who has to do them all. If I just keep the gate closed, maybe it will be easier?? Nah, it just makes it worse. So starting this new year of marriage means I can see the garden as a new adventure too. It’s a mindset shift, or maybe some mental gaslighting, but it works!

It’s all too easy to want instant gratification, but I can tell you that achieving our garden in slow motion really helped us reflect and consider what we wanted, and we certainly made different decisions had we tried to do it all at once 20 years ago. I think the garden is a richer tapestry because of it, and that’s all thanks to the layers of seasons and experience that brought us here.

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