Checking in with My Gardening Muse

It's year two of my garden and I feel less fear. I have also given less attention.

But I do feel different; I have faith the plants will grow, some will die, and most of it will not be my fault as long as I turn up and water. That is just the cycle of things.

I tried not to overcrowd my plants, because last year I crammed so many plants in each box that the plants had to grow OUT of the boxes seeking sun, and some died beneath the leaves of others.

I had compost this year to use for planting. A year of vegetarian trash has been converted into deep, loamy soil filled with earth worms. I was amazed. Jonathan really could not believe it.

Also, after two years at LCW and gardening classes, Theo really is confident in the garden. He knows what he is doing, and he does it without fear. He shakes out the roots and plants them tenderly. He grows potatoes and plants seedlings. He could work in a nursery. He just inspires confidence.

I put in peas and tomatoes (a big variety, no neurotic heirlooms) and squash and cucumbers and eggplant and zucchini and three sweet caroline watermelons (a weakness: sometimes I pick my plants just for the poetry of their names)

I went up to visit my fledgling garden on Sunday and nothing seemed to have grown. Animals had dug holes, and a few plants had lost their lives. It was neither exciting, nor depressing. But I was nervous to show Jill Tanner, my gardening muse.

But today I invited her up for a look. She climbed up the terraces in her stylish black top, designer sunglasses and black flats, and praised me and encouraged me.

Oh, I lapped it up like child.

"Your garden looks great!" She said. "Great job with the compost! Oh, your plants look so healthy. Your peas won't survive, you need some new watermelons, plant them in the other corner for more sun, and I would err on the side of overcrowding. Yes, I will give you a sungold seedling (our most favorite tomato--so sweet it tastes like candy). Oh, you are doing so well!"

I felt like an initiate. Still a beginner, but more confident. I can do it.

This weekend, watermelons, pole beans, and some wacky strains of cucumber (last year I fell in love with an Armenian cucumber, all prickly and lemon-flavored).

I feel proud. Very proud.

Pictures to come. I promise.

Checking in With my Gardening Muse

And myself!

For Easter we invited my gardening muse and her family over for dinner. I prayed she wouldn't ask about the garden. I worried because I had just had a horrible revelation about myself, brought on by gardening.

Gardening makes me nervous! It makes me neurotic! It makes me crazy!

I worry about every little seed and whether it will come up. I worry whether I am doing it right, whether I got the soil mixture right, whether it is too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. And whether I got dud seeds. But mostly I worry that I will do something that will mess it all up.

Two days after I planted a few plants and a lot of seeds I walked down the stairs and a beautiful zucchini plant Jonathan had planted was flowering. It was perfect, healthy, and I wanted to pluck it and fry it up Neapolitan style. But here is the weird thing. Rather than thinking: Hooray, this zucchini plant is thriving, I bet mine is, too. I thought, Oh No, I am just too scared to go up and check my plants. In fact, the more scared I got, the more paralyzed I became. I simply could not make myself go up to the back garden. And if you saw the Peruvian terraces I have to scale to get to my garden boxes you would know that it would be very easy to never, ever go up there again.

All of this had been running through my mind: my fear, my worry, and my reaction to my worry, which is to run away.

But Oh, my gardening muse, she was so wise.

"Oh I feel the same way," she said. "I worry about them all like children."

"It's true," her husband chimed in. "I saw her out there this morning, hunched over her tomato plants with a look of fear and worry in her eyes."

"Really?" I said. And I got all confessional like therapy.

"Let's go," she said. And she dragged me up into the back garden in my dress, she with a glass of red wine in her hand.

While we walked she gave me a pep talk. "Don't worry," she told me. "You have to think of this as a giant experiment. This may not be the right place. Your seeds may be no good. This may not be the right place in your garden. You are just learning and seeing what happens."

Her words were balm for my soul. She climbed up the uppermost terrace and the boys helped unwind the hose. She stood there in her Sunday best, wine glass in one hand, hose in the other, and sprayed away, looking so dapper and confident and Easter-y. She looked at a limp Amazon chocolate tomato plant that looked like it had already given up. It hurt me to look at it. She took it in her hand gently, and said, "Don't worry. These are very sensitive."

"Oh."

She talked me through it and gave my plants water and by the end of her hose-down they looked like they might resurrect.

I thought about how my garden has a Buddhist lesson for me. You see, it is so easy for me to do the active part of things. To begin. To buy. To dig. To build. To plant. But the waiting and watching and nurturing part for me is torture. It just kills me. I would rather run away and never look back.

But I must be Buddhist. I must force myself to look each day. I must look at the plants that are dying, the plants that are thriving, and do what I can for all of them, no blame. Just observation.

Today (two days later...it took me a day to digest all of this) I climbed back up. It took me until 4:30 but I made myself look, and water. The Amazon Chocolate looked like it might survive after all, and the cucumbers and zucchini are thriving. I felt a little bit stronger. But it is the daily practice that matters--as with everything--not the dramatic resurrection.

I pray I can make myself go back up there tomorrow.

Who ever thought there would be so many mental blocks to a garden?