Gimme a break

A love story about growing things

There comes a point in every summer where I just need things. to. stop.

Do you feel this way, too?

Work is busy working, the kids want to do All The Things, several of us have appointments (seemingly) daily, that damn check engine light is on in the car again, the weeds are never-ending, the pool needs cleaning, the dogs have tangles behind their ears, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done. That’s assuming I could possibly muster the energy to keep going past 8pm, which – let me be frank – I’ve got nobody to impress with my ability to suppress a yawn. And yet somehow at 9pm I still find myself rubbing purple paint off the downstairs bathroom sink from an undisclosed point in the day when one of the kids decided to “clean up the art studio.”

I mean… we don’t have an art studio, so there are a lot of problems with that statement.

If you were to ask my wife – please don’t – she would tell you a major source of all this overwhelm is the huge yard, of which a large chunk is occupied by the garden. If you were to ask me – I’ll assume you have – I would tell you that the garden is the solution to all of our busy problems.

Let me tell you how it started.

One year growing up in Indiana my mother asked a neighbor to bring his small tractor over and till up a section of the back yard for a garden plot. We grew tomatoes and cucumbers out there, and I still recall the sheer glee of pulling back those scratchy cuke leaves to find the baseball bat-sized cucurbits hiding beneath. They weren’t even edible at that size, but I was hooked on the thrill of growing something from a tiny seed into a sprawling mess of vines and flowers and tasty fruits.

Thirty years later I finished a master’s degree in sustainable agriculture. There were a few stops along the way (growing things in pots on apartment balconies, building new Pea Patches in various Seattle neighborhoods, working on an urban vegetable farm for a college internship, etc.), but the most important ones involved creating new gardens wherever I called home. This home was no exception.

The first real summer gardening in this space, after the trees came out, making space for the first greenhouse and eight more growing beds.

The best, sunniest corner of the backyard in this house was ensnared in a nest of blackberry canes so thick it took six months to find the corner fence of the property. Imagine having to double-glove, thick garden gloves under heavy leather ones, just so that I could grab the canes and slice them small enough to fit into a yard waste bin. Rabbits had created an entire warren under that mess, and the soil they fertilized was primed and waiting for better use.

We bought a large rototiller.

We removed trees.

We built a garden fence.

I started mixing my own fertilizer.

A greenhouse took center stage.

We added more beds.

We made the fence bigger.

We planted more trees.

It was all so much work. It still is. But the nature of the work is restorative and energizing even as my tired muscles ache at the end of a long day. And now that there are beds and paths and an orchard, it’s actually easier to maintain than those parts of the yard that are less orderly, less regularly inhabited.

One of thousands of the fuzzy bees who fangirl over our raspberry blossoms.

Breaks from my work desk mean a quick stroll past the towering sunflowers, through the garden gate, out to water the seedlings just emerging in the new greenhouse, to count the hazelnuts hanging heavy on the trees, or to collect a bunch of colorful carrots for the neighbors. The kids walk their friends and our adult guests through the rows and beds to show them the tassels on the corn stalks or how tall the pole beans have grown in the last week. I sit beneath the apple trees to prune and weed, sometimes just to catch my breath from all the labor of digging or harvesting, grateful for their shade, hopeful for the fruit pulling their thin branches low to the ground as the days wind closer toward late summer and the start of autumn.

Potato flowers, red cabbage, zucchini, strawberries, green cabbage, hazelnuts, plums and raspberries, lettuce mixes, and pea vines.

This time of year is a fever pitch of work to keep up with everything happening out there. We water near daily in the heat to keep the produce strong and healthy, to help the seeds for the autumn and winter garden sprout tall and hearty, to condition the new greenhouse soil. Hands and pockets and turned edges of shirts bulge with too many picked cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli sprouts, peppers, peas, onions, and blueberries than we know what to do with once they’re inside.¹ My sales pitch for zucchini and cabbage is on point. Pretty soon I’ll be making you a green bean offer you can’t refuse.

It's a flurry. It’s a mess. It’s a disaster of sweaty backs and dirty toes and never enough time to get those damn seeds in the soil, and I cannot imagine a better way to lose control of one’s summer than in a garden that outpaces you with every blossom it produces.

In the marathon that is summertime, I just want a brief respite of walking pace to get my heartrate under control before the final push, but these plants won’t slow down for me at all. And I love them for it.

Before long I will be sneaking my bare toes into the soft soil beneath the potatoes as the kids and I pull them out tenderly (because fingerlings are nothing like Russets). The tomatoes will succumb to powdery mildew, the lettuce will bolt, and the green beans will be too big and dry to do anything but save for seed. We will plant new garlic cloves, I’ll start closing the new greenhouse doors at night, and our daylight will diminish.

The garden will rest, and so will I.

And in those midwinter dreams my wife will say yes to replacing more of the lawn with more garden beds. Which is how I’ll know they’re dreams… because she’s not giving in to my desires again anytime soon.

This rhythm of nurturing soil and seed and stem and leaf is an odd kind of torturous delight, and I’m not sure I will ever have the capacity to explain why it makes my heart sing. But it does.

So if I seem tired by the end of the day, rest assured it is only because too many people have said no to a bag of pickling cukes, and I’m not sure just how much more relish I can make.

---

Christy Moore is an iconic Irish musician. This is one of my favorites, and it captures the sentiment of the seasons beautifully. It’s not hard to imagine my garden as the setting for it.

The January man he goes around in woollen coat and boots of leather
The February man still shakes the snow from off his clothes and blows his hands
The man of March he sees the Spring and wonders what the year will bring
And hopes for better weather.
Through April rain the man goes down to watch the birds come in to share the summer
The man of May stands very still to watch the children dance away the day
In June the man inside the man is young and wants to lend a hand
And smiles at each new comer.
In July the man in cotton shirt he sits and thinks on being idle
The August man in thousands takes the road to watch the sun set by the sea
September man is standing near to saddle up another year
And Autumn is his bridle
The man of new October takes the rain and early frost is on his shoulder
The poor November man sees fire and mist and wind and rain and winter ere
December man looks through the snow to let eleven brothers know
That they're all a little older
The January man he comes around again in coat and boots of leather
To take another turn and walk along the icy road he knows so well
The January man is here the start of each and every year
Along the road forever

Your trans friend,

Robin

---

1. We delivered a huge bag of produce to friends last night AND COMPLETELY FORGOT TO TAKE THE CABBAGE. And I cannot forgive myself. Not because they needed it for coleslaw but because I need it gone!