And we’re off! Two of the three vegetable garden beds have been planted. Maiden crops include tomatoes (3 types), peppers (3 types), sweet basil, Japanese eggplant and marigolds for the good juju they bring. Not yet pictured, but hopefully soon: cucumbers, okra and nasturtium for salads because I am all about the presentation (as if you didn’t know that already).
It seems only fitting that I should plant it today, Mother’s Day, as my mother was a green thumb par excellence. She could grow ornamental plants like nobody’s business just by putting a stick in the dirt, watering it and then no doubt telling it that if it didn’t grow there would be consequences. It was my father, however, who was the one who enjoyed growing fruits and vegetables and I can remember having everything from corn to papayas planted in our backyard. Alas, he found his greatest success with radishes and to this day I still kind of wince when I see them in a salad (though I do dig watermelon radishes).
Vegetable gardens have become a hobby for most folks and an expensive one at that. Case in point: A 40 lb. bag of herb and vegetable soil from the nursery around the corner from me costs $9.99. I won’t tell you how many bags I used to fill those beds (the third one is only partially full because I bought all they had), but let’s just say you could buy a lot of organic watermelon radishes at Whole Foods for what that dirt cost me.
For people like my parents who grew up during The Great Depression gardens were anything but a hobby. If you wanted to eat, you grew and picked vegetables. If you wanted to get paid, you picked cotton. Looking back on my father’s suburban garden I can’t help but think that it was a way for him to reconnect with his past. Given that our own backyard crops could be a bit lean at times I can remember loading up the trunk of our green Oldsmobile sedan with buckets and going to the pick-your-own fields on the outskirts of town where we would harvest purple hull peas, cucumbers and sweet corn. As a kid I thought it was a great fun, but I wonder if my dad looked over at that shiny green Oldsmobile parked on the side of the road as he was out in the field pulling peas off the vines and thought to himself, “Yeah, I’ve come a long way.”
I will never know what it’s like to have to grow my own food if I want to eat. But I hope that I still have some of that humble DNA coursing through my veins that reminds me that I’m just one generation removed from those who did. And if there’s a better metaphor for remembering one’s roots than planting your own garden I don’t know what it is. Even if it’s not dirt cheap. Or cheap dirt, I suppose.
I'm Just Being Frank 