Picky Gardener: Peace and Solace in the Garden

I recently visited my community garden plot to put a few melon plants in the ground. While I was there, another gardener and her children came to visit her weeds. The youngest of the two girls asked me, “are you the picky gardener?” I laughed and said that I was. Their mother, of course covered for her child’s unabashed honesty and question, by correcting her and stating, that I was the “good gardener.” She was embarrassed either by her children audacity or by the knowledge that her own views of me and my gardening were now expressed by her children.

In either case, it became clear to me that, I am perceived by some as a completely anal-retentive gardener or at the very least, not average in my approach to vegetable growing and that the mother of these two wonderfully honest children, in my perception seems to be teaching her children to accept mediocrity, unknowingly or not. She is doing this by denigrating someone else’s more zealous work or passion.

I am not found of mediocrity, and I am in constant inner turmoil with myself in an attempt to think, act, speak, intellectualize, converse, believe, work, make, or live more than a mediocre life. This inner turmoil is both painful and rewarding, and has created in me a constant and manic search for betterment. For me, this search has taken numerous emotional, physical, and intellectual manifestations. Which suffice it say, are not always pleasant, however, are an aspect of my human condition.

In the past few years, I have found much interest and fascination with gardening. I have spent many hours digging, composting, sewing seeds, saving seeds, picking bugs, harvesting vegetables, canning, maintaining tools, and preserving food. I have read a variety of books on gardening and I am constantly on the lookout for a new book or information that will enhance my understanding and knowledge of gardening. I also believe strongly that gardening has a huge potential to mitigate some of the world’s environmental and food source problems. In addition, the vegetables from an organically nurtured garden are incredibly delicious. I have been eating and cooking with them my entire live. In my opinion absolutely no other farming method compares with the vegetables produced from a well tended, nurtured, and loved garden.

My personal connection to the earth has been a struggle for me to understand. Until recently I have mostly had an intellectual appreciation for the world I live in. Many of my family, friends, and heroes have enjoyed intensive backpacking trips, canoeing, nature expeditions, and adventures. I prefer walking in the woods with defined paths, car camping, and swimming in clean lakes and rivers. I have met people who seem to have a spiritual and/or psychic connection to the earth, and whose bodies seem to flow and move with the seasons. I enjoy the seasons, however, I have always felt like a silent observer of them, physically disgruntled by their extremes and enjoying there pleasantries.

At this point, I am more fearful of Mother Nature’s wrath as a result of global warming, then I am comfortable with her nuances. I don’t even know how to emotionally or intellectual deal with the recent wave of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the earthquakes in Haiti. I do consider myself an environmentalist or at least environmental concerned because I am not sure what the term really means anymore.

After I was accused of being a “picky gardener,” I began to reflect and notice something about my spiritual and intellectual connection to the earth. At the core of my being I am a searcher and a creator. I make objects and I am constantly searching for ways to improve upon what I create, and how I live. However, I do have limitations, and I am not afraid to ask for help. My current understanding of my connection to the earth is very basic, it is physical, and I feel closest to it when I am improving its soil to grow plants that I can later eat. Within the past few years, since I became a passionate gardener, I have felt much closer to the seasons and, therefore the earth, because, I have become more dependent on Spring, Summer and Fall to grow and preserve food for the Winter. I need the earth to survive, and like all creatures, always have. The difference for me now is that, much of my family’s food comes from my sweat, labor, and the soil, rather than from my wallet and a grocery store. Gardening is like anything else, you can turn it into an art form, in fact I have studied some artists who have done this such as Amy Franceschini. In 1995 she, founded Futurefarmers, a collective of international artists. http://futurefarmers.com.

So yes I am proudly a “picky gardner”, and I find solace in the rich loam that I helped to improve and where my vegetables grow. I am dependent upon it as we all are. On days when I am uncomfortable in my skin, unhappy, frustrated, or disgusted with humanity, I go to my garden for solace where I find peace tending plants.

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