A Barebones Garden
We closed the gate on the garden the weekend before Thanksgiving, grateful for what transpired: a massive learning season. I took more chances than usual with my vegetables, and was surprised, delighted, and equally disappointed too.
As I peer through the chicken wire gate at the mostly tidy beds, I can now clearly see the bones of the garden. The season is laid bare, the structures no longer enveloped in life, obscuring the foundation that supports the life we foster. Instead, the beds now feel the shunt of winter pushing south as much as I do when I venture outdoors each day. There’s no escaping yourself in winter, and that’s true for the garden too. It sits in earnest, months in waiting, for attention, for life to return. Waiting for the microorganisms to awaken and bring life back to the soil, I can’t help but wonder what that feels like. It bears the brunt of winter, along with the numerous perennials that dot the garden too. I wonder what it might feel like to be a deciduous tree in the depth of a long, brutally cold night. Do they feel the same sting my face does as I tuck my chin into my parka, trying my best to protect the slivers of skin that I left uncovered? Does their bark sting like my nose as it protects their xylem and phloem, or do they get the bone-chilling effects of a -20F breeze just like me?
And what about those strawberries? Evergreen leaves thinner than a paper bag, as dark as a green avocado this time of year, sometimes forced to tolerate arctic blasts without any snow for protection. How do they do it, and then go on to produce the most luscious fruits come mid-June? What’s the secret to enduring such strife, and keep on finding a way to flourish? Surely it’s some kind of antifreeze, an in-house resilience that was passed down through the millennia. Somehow, miraculously, inspirationally, being stung over and over again does not result in death, but instead becomes part of the fabric of the seasons. Something to endure. Something to accept even, the inevitablilty of pain. Perhaps and probably for many, a detested reality of residing in cold climates, this winter sting is a season all it’s own. We are at once stripped back and bare and equally protective and cautionary – but most importantly, still alive no matter how it might seem to an onlooker. It reminds me of grief, that now familiar bodily ache that washes over me in every season when I’m reminded of my late father. A bitterness that stings as brutally as the day he passed, and yet, here I am. Living and loving life, finding happiness and setting my own metaphorical fruit. We are, like strawberries, built to endure unrelenting strife and go on to flourish and bear fruit.
And what did this garden of ours really say to me this season, anyway? It said funny things like trying to rekindle old friendships can be harder than you’d hoped because your decades-long kinship may have sunset for good. This is another kind of grief being served to me because I was listening to the universe. I’m specifically wondering about my beloved Fortex pole beans, a dependable workhorse I benched because of Japanese beetles only to invite back this year to the most dismal row of unproductive green beans in my entire gardening career!
The garden also whispered in my ear that I don’t have to have the biggest pepper seedlings by mid-April to ensure ripe peppers before a frost, inviting me to break from habits I’ve held so dear I don’t even know if I can garden without them. It appears the garden is laughing at my extraordinary seed-starting efforts, trying to reassure me that my deeply entrenched tardiness can come waltzing out to play, finally. That I can direct seed peppers and they will ripen! Sure, I’ll need to pay attention and select fast-maturing varieties, but isn’t that what winter dreaming is for, anyway?
This season wasn’t a carte blanche to abandon indoor seed starting, though. It cautioned me to not give up on my onion seedlings. I learned that the 2-month indoor head start is a significant contributor to the biggest and best storage onions. The garden also got a good laugh when I transplanted some tomato seedlings I arrogantly mistook for plum perfect seedlings. These plants engulfed an entire 4x6’ bed with their tentacles reaching out like a family of octopuses, an unruly corner I turned my back on for far too long. The plant was an F2 sun gold and I’ve saved some of the seeds to grow out next year as a kind of nod to the chaos I embraced this year. And I won’t soon forget this misfortune because I’ll be weeding tomato seedlings from that bed for years to come. This particular sting reminded me there are limits to incorporating a laissez-faire mindset to this garden after all.
The garden doles out respite and entertainment, nourishment and distractions, throughout summer. But there’s an equally potent energy about a winter garden, especially one that goes dormant like ours. It was one of the bigger influences in my life in my mid-40s, one that, after several years learning to garden on such a large scale, taught me that it's okay to do less. Taught me that we can take the space we need to feel the sting of loss, to drop our leaves and go quiet. In other words, it’s okay to make change. It’s more than okay, it’s a natural part of the rhythm of life.
To uphold a homeostasis is to work against nature. But to push open the gate, to feel your way into a new mindset, that is the kind of growth and ease a garden calls us to do in every season of our lives.
