I went a little crazy in the Spring of ’23…..

I had been given the gift of a legacy garden space. Sixty feet by forty feet of incredibly fertile, beautiful, soil. A little greenhouse. A few separate beds. A cold frame. And a “potting shed” full of pots, tools, and bags of miscellaneous bug-killing, root-nourishing potions. We won’t talk about how the potting shed (once a sheep shack) has snakes living in it. Lots of them. Happily. We’ve worked out a certain detente where I leave them alone and they……sashay away. 

Anyway, I am learning how to garden as I go. First lesson was: it’s ridiculously expensive to buy all your plants already started for you. It also costs dearly to buy all your seeds from that cute little store down the road, and if you wait until planting season, they’re often out of the very thing you’re looking for. (I couldn’t find broccoli to save my life). Little by little I learned what the best companies to order from are; some are more expensive than others, but all are based here in New England, where our growing season is so short you can practically hold your breath for the length of it. I bought…..well, we won’t talk about how many seeds I bought. I invested in a seed-starting set-up. And I jumped in.

Oh, my Dad had a twinkle in his eye when he saw that baker’s rack filled with growing lights, warming mats, and trays and trays of seedlings. I had planted one seed at a time, in careful rows, sure that half of them would not germinate. But they all did. Every. Single. Seed. By the first week of April I had over 320 plants in my hallway. Last frost didn’t happen until the end of May. I learned that smart gardeners up here on the mountain don’t plant until after Memorial Day. I’ll let you imagine how my house looked with 320 potted-up, two-month old, ground-hungry, plants in it!!

Meanwhile I paced out my garden, filling my notebook with romantic visions and plans for where everything would go. The planning, after all, is such a cathartic and meditative part of any venture. The time spent looking at all those beautiful pictures in the catalogs, imagining all my seedlings thriving and providing me and my family with countless meals and lovely bouquets of flowers……that time was filled with joyful anticipation.

SOMETIMES THE PLANNING IS THE BEST PART

Well, history will tell the story of what came next. What came after I carefully and lovingly planted every one of those 320 seedlings in my beautiful dirt. Right after my first battles with the bugs and beasts who wanted to eat all my plants. The Flood of ’23 screwed up a lot more than just garden plans around Vermont. I was thankful to harvest anything from that sodden, wet, garden. But I’m not here to talk about what happened to THAT garden season. I’m here to wonder about our resilience, and the fact that everyone I know including myself is happily (perhaps with just a little trepidation) planning their 2024 gardens. Seed catalogs have been thoughtfully perused and little packets were ordered with great anticipation even while the snow still blanketed the ground. New drawings have been sketched out. The baker’s rack has been resurrected in the hallway, and I’m eagerly awaiting the day when I can start my seeds. (hold your horses, Westy, it’s still too early, according to last year’s notes!). Gardeners all over are enjoying the hope that THIS year their gardens will grow up to look like those pictures in the catalogs. This year there will be a bounty. This year the bugs and the pests will back off. Haha!

What keeps us going? How do we approach the next growing season with such zest again and again? I’ll speak for myself-it’s the joy and the challenge of making things grow. It’s the fascination with putting a little tiny seed into dirt and watching it burst through towards the sky. It’s the potential for such great satisfaction, of watching, eating, preserving, of feeding yourself and your family. It’s also a learning experience that keeps on teaching, forever. My dad, who’s been gardening for many decades, is still learning what to do and what not to do. Gardening keeps our minds and our hands busy, and when it goes well, we reap beautiful and edible rewards. Furthermore, the planning allows us to start anew. The planning-or rather, the dreaming-feeds our wild and beautiful souls.

By the way, you don’t need forty by sixty feet to garden. You know that, right? You can garden in a pot on your windowsill. Same joy. Less groundhogs, too.