At Large

Above photo courtesy of iStock user Marina Lohrbach.

“You still have time.”  

The young lady at the garden center had been watching from a distance and edged closer to overhear our conversation rife with indecision. There was a bit of laughter in our back and forth, with remembrances of a small garden plot created well in the past just outside a distant kitchen door.

“Just plant them where they get some good sun, keep them watered, and voilà: tomatoes, beans, lettuce, radishes, squash – it’ll be great.” She seemed quite convinced.

Always appreciative of positive conversations, we thanked her profusely and gingerly selected a few tomato seedlings, some beans and lettuce. Squash was too big a commitment.  

“The merry month of May” had come and gone, passing us by in the swirl of rototilling and planting accomplished by neighbors. Clearly, their decisive actions had been intimidating, and we were now hopelessly behind in fulfilling spring ambitions. There had been breakfast conversations about a garden, but they had all trailed off into musings about dinner plans, theater tickets, and driving all the way to Great Barrington to see a movie.

Mistress Mary, quite contrary

Over the years, we have come to terms with our heritage. No farmers in our blood line. No fishermen (or women). No hunters to bring home the odd pheasant or deer. Modest intellectuals and academics, certainly, but there was no DNA coil that would transfer generation to generation any inclination to successfully tend a garden patch.

We have lived on both coasts as well as the upper Midwest. In none of those locales had we been successful in nurturing a backyard garden and enjoying tomatoes right off the vine or crisp lettuce harvested moments before crafting a bountiful summer salad. Fortunately, there seems to be no absence of roadside stands in the tri-state area as gardens ripen and a battered cigar box as a money drawer is nestled between corn, tomatoes, squash, radishes, and lettuce set out still fresh with morning dew.

How does your garden grow?

But, we’ll try this year. We’ll heed the advice of the energetic woman who took time away from refreshing displays with a hose that snaked around the yard to ring up a modest purchase. Plant. Sun. Water. What could go wrong?

Sadly, we could answer our own rhetorical inquiry. What could go wrong? Rest assured; plenty could go wrong. Start with rabbits and insects and all sorts of scales and blights. Factor in benign neglect, and the question answers itself. From painful, embarrassing experience emerged the memory of that ill-fated garden of the past.

Driving back home, the irony of the purchase was both poignant and strangely remote. The house where the first furtive attempt at gardening had taken place has been, as of a few short months ago, reduced to ash and rubble. It was the stuff of Greek tragedy.

With silver bells and cockle shells

Long ago and far away – 50 years to be precise – in Pacific Palisades, CA, we had the energy and audacity of youth. Bouncing between cardboard cutout apartments, we finally lighted in a rental home a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Morning fog was dispelled by light ocean breezes in a community of young families who pushed strollers to the center of town for ice cream and groceries. Job in hand, family started, we settled in and, with great intentions, decided on starting a kitchen garden.

With two small children, the appetite for fresh produce seemed insatiable, so with seed packets in hand, we left the feed and hardware store on Topanga Canyon along with a shovel, a hoe, and resolve. Centerpiece of this new adventure was to be a cantaloupe vine, snaking through the modest plot of California soil.

There had been a solid start as the ground was broken up, the seeds carefully placed in measured rows, and the light spray of the hose applied. Day after day, we repeated the ceremony, rejoicing with the first green sprouts, making sure there were no offending weeds and applying enough water to moisten the soil.

Until we didn’t.  

And so my garden grows

Something came up. There was an early meeting. One of the kids got a cold and had to be taken to the pediatrician. The car was due for servicing. We’re running late. We’ll get to the garden tomorrow.

Cantaloupes do not cry out when their vines dry up and die. Radishes do not send cryptic notes complaining of poor service as they wilt back toward the soil and eventually crumble.

Three weeks into full-fledged neglect, we finally made it back out to the garden, which had been tucked neatly at the side of the house, out of view. Out of sight apparently meant out of mind … and out of water. 

Without question, it was a flagrant case of neglect. We had simply become distracted, our garden priorities more and more out of focus and finally unrecognizable. No garden that year … or the year after or the one after that.  

But, this year is going to be different. We are going to take our seedlings, dig up a small patch in the yard, and pay attention. We are going to firm up our resolve, make sure that we do not get lazy, and eagerly look forward to participating in the eventual marvel of sitting down to an August supper with our home-grown produce on the table.

Oh, wait.  

Is there a lesson to be learned here, based on our previous flagrant, uncaring dereliction of duty?  

When we start to let distractions take priority and fail to concentrate on what’s important, could there be negative consequences? It is entirely possible that this unfolding saga is really not about shriveled cantaloupes.

Many years ago, we had the pleasure of working with noted author/illustrator Maurice Sendak as the talented production team at Weston Woods Studios translated his Nutshell Library into narrated filmstrips for schools and libraries.  

One of the four gems included in the library is the cautionary tale of Pierre, the boy who didn’t care. As in Sendak’s seminal, “Pierre” has a happy ending as the title character abandons his recurring theme of “I don’t care,” is reunited with his family, and realizes that inaction is action.

And, therein is the moral. We lose that for which we do not care. Will this year’s garden be different? One can only hope … and care.

Now, please, go water the garden.