It was my mother who first introduced me to gardening, well, to growing plants anyway. She was a kindergarten/first grade teacher—one of those super heroes with special powers to tame young hearts and broaden their horizons in a single year! So, to my mom, I imagine it was par for the course the day she showed little-kid me how to plunk a promising sweet potato in a jar of water and set it in the light. Little did she know that plant, with its miraculous trailing vines and luxuriant leaves, was a gift that’s continued to give. That gift of gardening has kept me grounded (literally) and taught me many lessons my mom didn’t live to teach me herself.
After my mother’s passing, I don’t remember planting more sweet potatoes or gardening until our family moved to Leavenworth (the town, not the prison) and I began my first year in high school. There, I planted pumpkin seeds on our pizza slice of a backyard, but I don’t recall watering, weeding, or anything else except the vines that threatened to overrun the neighbors. I did raise enough pumpkins to decorate for Halloween that year. Without one squash bug showing up to spoil the party!
Then came college, meeting and marrying my hubby Floyd, and filling the bay window of our first home with a jungle of house plants. I also had some success with the small garden I planted at the back of that narrow lot, enough that Floyd surprised me with one of his unusual but treasured gifts, a much-needed weed digger. There’s also a picture from that time of our oldest as a baby propped on another successfully-grown pumpkin. But I don’t recall feeling like a real gardener until we moved to the farm and I was trying to feed our family of six on a farmer/teacher’s budget.
I remember sharing an abundance of cantaloupe from my farm garden one year with the cooks for school lunches and fall evening campfires when our kids and friends used the overgrown zucchinis to bat shriveled vegetables into the flames. With four kids, the garden became my refuge, a place I didn’t feel guilty about going for some peace and quiet. They’d much rather help Floyd fix fences than me pick beans, anyway. Time in the garden renewed me. Allowed me to breathe, to observe, and to marvel at the miracle of watching a seed I’d tucked into a damp bed and covered with a blanket of soil in the spring become an abundant producer in a matter of months. I still feel like a proud parent every year when I harvest that first tomato.
I learned a big life lesson on a breezy evening when I was picking green beans in the garden behind our house. My back ached from bending over all those rows and as I stood up for a moment to stretch and ease it, I watched the blades of the windmill whirl above the old shed, and listened to the rhythmic clatter as it pumped water into the cattle tank nearby.
Maybe it was the splash of that water that made me decide to run into the house and the bathroom at that moment. Or maybe it was a whispered warning from my mom. But when I returned five minutes later, a long piece of metal was embedded like a knife in the ground by my bean-picking basket. A blade from the windmill above, which now had a gap like a first grader’s missing tooth. The lesson? “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” That evening was not my time. But it was a reminder that, though our lives may be a pain in the neck ( or back or bladder) at times, they are fleeting and should be treasured.
A similar but more global lesson came a few years later when I was cutting okra in a different garden (far from the windmill) planted in a bigger space across the drive from our house. I know, I know. I can almost see you shaking your heads and hear you saying, "Okra? Who in their right mind would plant that slimy stuff?” (Hand raised.) Me, because despite its slime and itchy leaves, fried okra is a family favorite and is wonderful in the soups I’m not allowed to make (Floyd’s rule) until the temperature outside drops below 45 degrees. Okra also reminds me of my mother and her bent toward southern cooking.
It took on a different meaning one clear fall day under a dazzlingly blue sky strangely devoid of the white vapor trails which usually cast shadows on our fly-over farm. Because during the time I was out in that peaceful garden cutting those okra pods off the stalks that September 11, hate prevailed. Thousands died or had their lives changed forever.
Every time I plant okra seeds now, I think of those who were lost and those still grieving them. I felt ashamed that day, frustrated with a world that would allow me to peacefully pick okra while so many suffered and died. The only way I can think to honor them is to keep gardening. To plant seeds in the soil and words of hope and truth in what I write and say.
My garden is nearing its end. The weeds are getting the upper hand and there’s not much left for the insects to damage that they haven’t already. My top-heavy tomatoes are leaning on their cages with shriveling leaves, and weary stems. The peppers are still peppering but I’ve run out of ideas for things to make with them. (Give me a holler if you want some. Peppers, I mean, but I’d be happy to throw in some ideas, too.) Floyd’s experiment with the Thai chili seeds he bought at the Asian market succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. I can’t wait to tease him about being hot stuff as he uses them up the next few years!
So, it’s about time to close up shop in the garden. But there’s a couple more lessons I feel compelled to mention about the garden that stems (pun intended) from the okra experience. They’re a bit more cryptic, but important since they apply to situations we’re all facing today.
Gardens thrive on diversity. My tomatoes flourished because the nasturtiums, garlic, and onions I planted among them guarded against harmful insects. In return, the tomatoes shaded them when it got hot. The peppers next door in the tractor tires produced a bumper crop because of the tomatoes’ good vibes! The rhubarb is happy with the cabbages planted around it and the dill I tucked in with the Daikon radishes flowered and provided food for a monarch caterpillar. All kinds of plants and creatures can live happily together and my lowly garden is proof.
But there’s one hateful plant that reminds me of someone we know and need to watch out for. Bind weed. I’m grateful that I had experience with a someone like it early in life, so I learned to recognize it and knew what to watch out for.
Bind weed is not a sweet potato. It’s deceitful, making promises it does not keep with its heart-shaped leaves and its twisted trumpet-shaped buds that open into dove white blossoms. While the showy blooms distract us, the insidious tendrils are latching on underneath, twisting things without us realizing it. Less-experienced gardeners might not know friend from foe but take it from me, bind weed is a foe that needs to be pulled out.
Oh sure, some try to justify what it does with claims that it makes oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from the air. True. But it’s hot air and the noxiousness it releases does more harm than good.
Leave it alone and it’ll take over the whole garden, bending this way and that, taking away the other plants’ freedoms. It takes work to root it out, expose it for what it is, and keep it from coming back again. But it’s the only way we’ll be able to keep our gardens safe for all.
Happy September,
Dale
Great reading as always!!
As always, Dale, you write so beautifully and truthfully. Thank you.