It is time to take advantage of my un-landscaped, relatively large backyard. Nothing more than a barren patch of hearty San Augustine grass -- with a scrubby, ugly little Tree With No Name tossed in the corner for good measure -- my yard has beckoned for a garden for the four years I’ve now lived here. To paraphrase a friend, it is time for a “liberty garden.”
The Recession is here. Not that I didn’t already know that, but the official announcements by Folks Who Know is likely to make some of my employers more nervous than they’ve already become (what with that radically different President-elect coming down the pike ‘n all….) and I -- more importantly, my work -- may become a bigger a luxury than they feel comfortable affording.
Good thing I live in the Land o’ Year-Round Sun. And here’s the bonus to not being able to afford a home in one of the more densely forested ‘burb areas around me: I have a lavishly sun-exposed plot of dirt just waiting to bear fruit.
Gardening is not new to me; it’s just something that I thought I’d had enough of long ago. It’s not as though I’ve been doing it for a long time, either. If my memory serves well, my last garden bit the dust -- actually, it was quite a bit messier than that -- in 1983. That’s when Hurricane Alicia visited and took with her most of the half-acre that I’d tended in my bikini. That’s how you get a tan when there’s no swimming pool in your neighborhood. A heavy rain storm a few weeks prior to Alicia had done in my four-foot tall corn. Then the relatively minor hurricane came along and flooded out everything else.
In spite of the multiple varieties we’d planted after tilling the huge plot with a rented machine, all we gleaned that year were a lot of beautiful tomatoes, a few radishes, and some squash. That’s the year I learned to love white squash. It’s also when I decided that I’d had all of the gardening I could take.
Gardening is a lot like marriage to me. I like the romanticized idea of it; it’s the harsh realities that I find… oh, well, there are just so many adjectives here that I can’t decide which one to use. But like marriage, gardening is a burden that seems more worthwhile as your need for it becomes greater.
So, it’s time. Time to stop merely tossing my compostable refuse out into the yard willy-nilly (although that’s made for an exquisitely happy lawn sans any additional fertilizing or seeding…) Time to start doing what I’ve been thinking about for a few years now. Again. Steering my existence even more toward self-reliance and less toward dependence on others.
We pushed off on this voyage gently. Instead of my usual Veggie Toss toward the back fence, my son, his dad, and a friend took advantage of all the off-time (without electricity) that Hurricane Ike brought with him and carefully dug up two small rectangles of earth. They meticulously scattered and buried a hodge-podge of seeds, plus a young basil plant and a flowering shrub that’d outgrown its indoor pot.
A few weeks later -- voila! -- sprouts of different-shaped leaves, followed by discernible buds, and now, a few acorn squash here, some colorful zinnias there,
flourishing basil, and a radish or two waiting underground. The scent of our newly adopted mutt wafts through the nostrils of wandering cats and raccoons, keeping them at bay like a live-in scarecrow. I have pretty greenery and flowers to gaze upon as I hang the laundry.
Painless. Gardening at this time of year is better. No stripping down, slathering up with bug repellent, and retreating inside with a sunburn after an hour of weeding and pruning. But then, these are very small plots. Still, starting small has assured a feeling of success all around. This is do-able.
Somewhere in between the Little Garden That Could, the newly adopted
pooch, and the crumbling wooden fence, there will be plenty this year.
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