The Peaceable Pursuit of Gardening

It started small, with some onion sets and a few tomato plants, back in 1987, the year we moved into our first house in a new development 35 miles west of Chicago.

By the time we moved back into the city about four years later, the space my ex lovingly called “Melanie’s back 40” had grown to also include lettuce, radishes, strawberries, corn, brussels sprouts, sunchokes, broccoli, eggplant, and  several kinds of squash. The only things I couldn’t make work were blueberries, asparagus, and rhubarb, much as I babied the former two. Not bad for someone who’d previously killed any houseplant she’d ever had.

In the city, my plot was necessarily smaller, but still included tomatoes, lettuce, squash and onions. It all ended in 1999, our first spring in Cincinnati; the yard didn’t lend itself to gardening. My one effort to balcony-garden here in Arlington ended with a victory by the pigeons when I got grossed out by finding their feathers in my protective netting (and all my tomato flowers gone).

I miss gardening. I miss anticipating the seed catalogs the way I used to anticipate the Christmas catalogs when I was a child. I miss starting the seedlings and scanning the long-range weather forecast to see if I dared put out my tomatoes before Mother’s Day. I miss being upset when a new editor took Organic Gardening in a bizarre direction. I miss talking about Victory Garden with friends and swapping experiences with Celebrity vs. Heirloom tomatoes. I really miss the great still-warm-from-the-sun produce.

But mostly, I miss that quiet time by myself, digging, planting, watering, nurturing, weeding, and the smell of fresh earth, opening itself up to me and my dreams. And I hope that one day, I have it again.