I understand that there are people in the world who don’t like writing. People who would cringe at the sight of a blank piece of paper and pen, or a blank document on the screen. To me, it is the ultimate freedom—I can write whatever I want? Travel to all manner of places in my imagination and memory? Words flowing out onto the page faster than my pen can write or hands can type? Easy! Natural!
But if you give me a gardening project, even transferring a small basil seedling into a clay pot, I will run. Yes, I love fresh veggies and herbs. Flowers are pretty. But I don’t like the feel of dirt in my fingers or toes, and I don’t like the sweat and anger that I immediately exude when holding a scythe or clippers or rake or hoe.
I’m not without a tinge of guilt about this. For 30 years, I’ve lived in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, a fertile, lush valley on the banks of the Connecticut River, especially famous for asparagus, tobacco, and corn. When I moved into my house, which we bought from my husband’s parents and where they had lived for a few years, I inherited a half-acre backyard with a full vegetable garden, including asparagus and raspberries. I had high hopes of carrying on the family garden.
Up until then, I’d only lived in coastal Atlantic or Pacific cities. But we had two babies and another on the way, and living in the city just wasn’t affordable, even in 1994. If it weren’t for the fact that there are 5 universities within 10 miles of this town, which means a lot of cafes, 59 to be exact, I don’t think I would’ve moved to the so-called Happy Valley. It is beautiful, mind you! But you really need to like northeastern hills (not really mountains), dark woods, murky ponds, mucky swamps, old farms, old barns, bats and mosquitos, and at the very least, gardening. It’s really country.
“I had high hopes of carrying on the family garden.”
And so we moved into my in-laws’ former house with the big backyard garden. How could I not take advantage of a beautifully tilled area that would magically give way to fresh vegetables? It seemed easy enough.
I wisely waited til spring. Never having gardened in my life, and based on my past luck with indoor plants, I naturally assumed that nothing would grow. So instead of starting with a few plants, I bought 20 tomato seedlings, 15 basil, 10 each of lettuce, corn, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and 5 pumpkin plants. I also bought innumerable starter packs of herbs. We ground up the earth with the rototiller that had been left here and somehow got all of those plants into the ground in April? May? June? No idea.
A bit of context: By then, we had three children under the age of four. In my mind, I pictured nursing the baby in a chaise longue out in the grass in the sun while the toddlers ran around happily. I saw us gleefully plucking herbs and vegetables every night for our dinners.
This is not what occurred. First of all, despite my prediction, almost everything we planted grew like crazy. But I also discovered that gardening absolutely involves weeding, or all-out combat against nature. By the time I caught on, weeding was out of the question. It looked like a jungle back there. The toddlers hated the prickers, spiders, mosquitoes, gnats, everything that nature offers. I, reduced to a toddler state, completely agreed with the kids. So we just ignored the backyard for a month or two.
Everything continued to grow with abandon. While I was reading Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are to my kids, it was happening out back. During this time, I was nursing, trying to get frozen fish sticks or pasta or omelettes on the table, and enforcing naps as well as the 1,001 rules of childrearing. Outside, beyond my long-faded control, there were hundreds of peppers, zucchini, and lettuce, and thousands of tomatoes and cucumbers, trapped by leafy herbs which I now couldn’t distinguish from weeds. The corn was the outlier that didn’t make it.
It was thus that the only thing my offspring learned about gardening was how to write the word “FREE”—free tomatoes, free zucchini, free peppers, etc.—as we placed the daily catch on a table in the front yard for passersby. If they’d been a little older, the kids could’ve sat at the table and perhaps sold the vegetables, becoming productive little businesswomen, but that was out of the question for toddlers who couldn’t dress or tie their shoes. I was sequestered inside, nursing the baby every three hours, and couldn’t let them out of my sight.
I give myself a lot of credit for the effort in that first year of living in the country—the result being that I have never gardened since.
Do not despair, O gardeners. I admit to having a teeny tiny plot (4’ x 4’) with perennials that friends have planted for me: iris, columbine, phlox, and omnipresent violets. This year, against all better judgment, I’m venturing into creating a pollinator garden with local plants, where the hedges of raspberries used to be. Though native, these plants have foreign names to me, like Hoary Vervain, Hairy Beardtongue, Ninebark, Boneset—good names for modern alternative bands. As of this writing, the wistful plants are still in their plastic starter trays, but I have high hopes…
Meanwhile, I suppose I can garden through writing. I plant a seed, a concept. I nurture the seedling—words, phrases, sentences. I weed through the undesired parts. Finally, I watch this creation grow before my eyes. If I don’t like what comes out, I’ll erase or delete it and try again, fresh, another day.
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My miniature garden, planted by friends and family, stones added by me to deter weeds
Ali de Groot is director of publishing for Modern Memoirs, Inc.