Dirt Under My Fingernails

So, I had a plot in a community garden last summer and felt it was a good experience - digging up the grass that was constantly encroaching, wacthing my bean plants rot to death from the bottom up, getting eaten alive by mosquitos under the sweltering mid-day sun - you know, character building stuff. Really, as challening as certain parts of it were, there was a lot about the experience that I enjoyed, and so I've decided to undertake the task of a summer garden once again - but not alone! My dear friend and co-worker Ruth is my co-head of our little plot, and we're also sharing another plot, with design to make it a Salsa Garden (aka grow in this special rectangle of land things with which to make salsa from at the end of the summer), avec our dear friend and fellow co-worker Karen.

So, our plot is a rectangular type piece of land, I think about 8' by 10' maybe, and right beside the east fence of the garden. The entire community garden itself is made up of about 7 columns of plots this size and I would say there are maybe 10 rows (of plots). Those numbers may be a little off, but keep in mind that I plot out garden plans people, not algebra equations! Anyways, our three plots make up the northeast corner of the garden, and two of the plots are quite overrun with grass right now (it wasn't until last summer - when I cut a plot straight out of sod for the first time and did battle with grass - that I understood the "grassroots" moniker given to local-, lay- people powered movements; grassroots are one of the most tricky, difficult, stubborn things a gardener can try to get rid of! Those roots grow deep and thick and I can understand how "grassroots" groups can share these qualities), however, Ruth and I have managed (with a little extra elbow grease lent to us from a fellow gardener who is generous with his time and his gardening skills) to rid our shared plot (mostly) of this fearsome fiend, and planted our first seeds tonight! Terribly exciting!

We got almost our whole department in on the experience as our Director happened by and carried some water for us by bucket from the rain barrels to our plot; Ruth's husband also gave a helping hand and planted a "seed" (read: aluminum can) to start us on our very own V8 juice tree. Or maybe it would have been a bush. Anyway, Ruth was a marvelous genius and bought seed tape, so planting was super easy. The tape is a very light material - quite similar to toilet paper (and I hear you can even make your own seed tape with toilet paper itself! We're tucking that idea away for next year... unless of course this year doesn't go well and turns us off gardening forever, but, we won't think about until we have reason to) - and the seeds are laid out in it in long strips, so the result is that the seeds are all pretty much evenly spaced apart from each other and can also be laid out in a nice straight row with much ease. So tonight we planted Swiss Chard, Radishes, Green Leaf Lettuce, Carrots, Romaine Lettuce, Carrots, Carrots, Peas, and Zucchini. All these plants-to-be are my babies, and, therefore deserving to be considered proper nouns, have all been bestowed the honour of capitalization. Really, why don't they let me make all the executive decisions when it comes to eking out the rules of the English language? ;)

So, hopefully it will rain this weekend, the weather will continue to be amazing and unseasonably warm and freak frosts will stay away; hopefully, our garden will grow. I've found there's a special kind of delight that comes from engaging in the process of growing your own food from seed to plant, of turning weed-ridden terrain to nourishment-giving tract, of journeying with a living investment so closely connected to our own well-being and very existence through consequential risks and rewards. It's a unique kind of joy that comes with seeing green life sprout and knowing your hands played a part in that, of following its development and feeling a pride and wonder that such a thing could be accomplished. All this is yet to come as the summer goes on. For now, I look at the dirt under my fingernails and feel some satisfaction in knowing my babies are in the ground and their journey has just begun.