I planted a garden this year even though I always considered myself a black-thumb-of-death variety gardener. When Ivy’s school held a plant fundraiser this past spring, I bought $50 worth of various starts and other sundry blooming varieties with names of Latin origin. In an effort to support my daughter’s language immersion program, I was willing to give my inner farmer another shot. But my intentions have not always been best sowed.
I was pregnant with Ivy when, like most expectant first parents, I worried whether I would be a good mother. Testing myself, I bought a few houseplants, reasoning if I could keep them alive, I would be a “good” mother. The Jasmine plant above my small apartment kitchen sick flourished, thrived and bloomed. I was so proud and pleased. I could do this, I could be cultivating and nourishing! And then Ivy was born. And the days and nights of new parent jet lag warranted an abandonment of the once-loved plant. Dangling from its gallows above the sink, it died from thirst and neglect.
I was optimistic enough not to take it personally and attributed its demise to newborn forgetful syndrome from which all manner of plants and pets alike suffer. When we bought our first house and my husband was confined to household chores because his allergies prevented him from the more “manly” outdoor binary gender roles; with shears in hand, I took to the yard. I loved it and had I more time without a toddler running into the street or other amuckish destinations, I would have dug my arms elbow deep into the soil every day. I was pleased that like most home sellers, someone had made a concerted effort to landscape the yard before we moved in. I figured it would be easy to maintain in its freshly groomed state. Ha! Caring for a four month-old baby is not conducive to yard maintenance. The plants took over until the summer Ivy turned two and a half when I returned for a second assault. I shaped up our yard in a manic energy spree while my husband was out of town. I played hooky from the gym and weedwacked and tortured the yard in a replacement workout. The results looked great (compared to the previous state) and I even boldly hosted a party in the back yard to sport my labor.
A month after we moved to that first house I buried Ivy’s placenta (which had been rotting in the freezer for several months) under the protective roots of the old English walnut tree shading most of our back yard. And a couple years later I deposited our family’s dead pet bunny while Ivy belted out her 2-year-old rendition of “Happy Birthday”. Shortly thereafter, the great English walnut began to wither. I took it as a bad omen and fretted about unforeseen future misfortune. Prophetically, a few months later I experienced an extreme health crisis and as the English walnut continually failed to produce either leaves or nuts I called in a team of arborists. The prognosis did not bode well for the 100-year-old fixture. I loved that tree, but knew it had to go before we experienced a wind or ice storm that would bring it down with disastrous results. Again, I felt like a foe to flora as the tree was sawed down and chopped into fireplace fodder. Recently someone told me that the energy from a placenta is too intense for the ground under a tree. As overly woo the explanation sounded, I was willing to accept it in place of the looming regret I used to feel. But I felt like a failure nonetheless.
As a get well present during my health crisis, a friend gifted me with an unusual looking plant. I do much better with succulents and although I didn’t know the name of my potted friend, I managed not to kill it. I unexepectantly landed a job and hauled the flowering prickled thing to my new cubicle. It sat in a sunlit window and when it looked like it could cough a desert hack, I would water it. It actually thrived and I began to think I could be a keeper of living things contained in pots. It was important to keep this plant alive because it was a symbol of my personal health. But then came the pregnancy part deux. I left my job a month before my twins were born, and among the paper ream boxes full of my cubicle innards, I carted home the plant. Where shortly after the birth of Tavi and Bea it suffered a fate similar to the former Jasmine plant. For a long time, I deluded myself into thinking I could revive it and it took some inward soul searching to release it to the white light.
The result of my navel gazing was a theory that my potted plants do not do well (as in they DIE) because they were not meant to live indoors. That makes me feel better anyway. But I kept faith in my outdoor gardening abilities. Our family moved to a new house one year ago. The previous owners left three big planter boxes in the yard filled with sunflowers whose huge yellow faces made me swoon as they swayed in the breeze. Their sky reaching stalks made me love the house even more than when I first laid eyes on its unpainted wood trim. In the fall the sunflowers died and I reverently pulled their dried husks and buried them in the compost heap. Then came the spring plant sale. I swear the planter box is an oasis of earthly fertility. Anything that touches that box has come to life (I’ll remember not to use it as a wooden sarcophagus for any future dead pets – thanks for the nightmares SK). I planted my instant fundraiser garden in the fertile soil during a spare moment of childless indulgence. I watched in amazement as in the culminating weeks, the garden littered a proliferation of produce. The peas were first to spring to life followed shortly by the beans, that in my ignorance I had left untethered. They stalked the other plants and twined their spindly vines around anything within reach. The tomatoes outgrew the paltry stakes I left for them and started to bend from the weight of their growth and production. I turned to my more greenish phalanged friends who cautioned me into quick action. I found wire halos for my overbearing tomatoes and leashed the beans to makeshift teepees and climbing supports. And then there was Seymour. My little garden of horrors unfurled a gargantuan zucchini plant that soon overshadowed the neighboring strawberries and cucumbers and edged its way into the borders of the herbal province. I obviously had not spaced plants with the intention of a prosperous harvest.
Although the garden has some mysterious component for which I cannot claim credit, I have taken pride in my ability to turn on the soaker hoses snaking through the expanse of vegetables and pluck the resulting edibles. Gardening feels productive and offers physical proof of nurturing care. Something that takes more time with my children and whose results I may never recognize.
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