As the world outside struggles to come to terms with the global pandemic, I also must come to terms with staying at home. I have always been a girl that likes to “get up and go” but as you know, I am “The Homestead Traveler”, so a part of me also loves to stay home to garden, cook and create.
I have always needed a “patch to scratch in” and an untended section of the garden will always beckon me to come to work. It’s an uncontrollable force of nature that draws me to the soil. It may start with me “just taking a walk” in the garden with my coffee cup in the morning. The next thing you know I have bent down to remove a weed and once the dirt has touched my hand the transformation begins and I am up to my elbow in garden soil. The garden always calls to me.
The hours fly by as I have my hands in the dirt and the sun shining overhead. It’s truly a blessing to have these extra hours in the garden given to me “guilt-free”, courtesy of the global pandemic. I truly have never had a time in my life that I didn’t feel like I needed to be doing something else instead. But now, in these days, there is nothing else I need to do right now.
I’m so happy that if this had to happen, at least it happened in the Spring, with so much to hope for, so much to plan. They say to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. It’s so true, as I clear out the garden beds I am dreaming of the plants that will thrive here. I can picture the pumpkin patch spilling over with vines and bursting out with large, ribbed, orange spheres of pumpkins in the late summer. This even though the pumpkin seeds are still inside the pumpkin sitting on my table.
I see my future tomato plants sprawling over the bamboo trellis’ with their red fruit ripening in the July sun. Even though currently they are only four inches tall sitting on the ground in a “six-pack” from the nurshery. I dream of the delicious platters of fresh tomatoes and Mozzerella we will eat along with crusty French bread drizzled with olive oil. Yes, the dream of basil plants is here too, so bushy and large, scenting the air with their fragrance.
As I “heave hoe” and really “put my back in it”, trying to remove the clumps of weeds, shovel by shovel, I stand erect, leaning on my shovel, to relieve the paint in my lower back. The beads of sweat are dripping down my forehead as I look toward the horizon. In my minds eye I already see the wildflowers happily edging the border around my garden.
There are yellow daisies and happy sunflowers mixed with red poppies and purple foxgloves. Of course, at the moment the wildflowers are only dreams in my overly optimistic “gardeners’ mind”. But I can see them as clearly as if they were right here at my feet instead of the bed of weeds that are my reality.
I can see the neat rows of bell peppers and jalopinos and Sicilian red chili’s. The red and green peppers look like little ornaments against the dark green foliage. I can already taste the spicy salsa I will eat this summer and the jars of hot sauce that I will process in my kitchen.
Yes, I dream of the summer heat and cool mornings picking my produce in a wicker basket. I am wearing a floral dress and a straw hat, why not? Isn’t that what dreams are for?
Yes, at the moment my back is aching from turning the soil and my hands are sore from pulling the weeds with dirt underneath my nails. Right now I am sweaty and dirty with my hair in a messy ponytail slightly askew from my vigorous labors. I have dirt across my face from wiping the sweat off my brow and I am wearing the clothes of a farmer: jeans, a dirty shirt, garden gloves and rubber boots. But in my dreams I am wearing that dress and harvesting the fruit of my labor. In my dreams there are wild flowers and sunflowers and foxgloves. It’s true that “gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized”.
I plant the eggplant I picked up at the nurshery, right now they are tiny little plants but I can already see their large purple fruit shining in the sun. Oh, the eggplant Parmesan I will make! I see myself standing barefoot in the kitchen on a hot summer day carefully cutting away the purple skin from the eggplant and cutting thick slices to dip in egg and flour to fry.
The green bean seedlings are carefully removed from their container as I hold the tender roots clinging to soil in my hand. Yes, they will be planted here, along the garden fence. I can see them climbing high with their green pods dangling. The cucumbers will grow along the trellis and I plant each one with dreams of them sprawling across the trellis with the large green cucumbers waiting for me to harvest and slice up with some lime and salt.
The weeks of April pass by, week by week, with intermittent phases of strenuous digging and pulling and yanking. Hauling heavy containers of weeds up and down the stone steps leading up to the upper terrace until my legs are shaking and my arms are unwilling to move. I surrender to the setting sun and drag myself into the house to shower and collapse in a happy exhausted gardeners stuper. Other days I am planting and planning, transplanting and dreaming of what will be.
This is a gardeners life, a labor of love that yields the most amazing results. All we need is sunshine, plants, water, labor and time. From small beginnings and dreams, a garden will erupt, it will bust loose and produce fruitage, it will not disappoint. It might overwhelm, it might underwhelm but it will teach you. You will learn hard work, you will learn what plants like certain spots, you will learn to tolerate weeds as “flowers that you just don’t know yet”, you will learn the happiness that hard work brings. You will eat the fruitage of your labor. In the future we will all be gardeners, so garden as though you will live forever…
