After a lingering winter that all but squeezed out spring, the garden is essentially planted. Yes, there is more to do. We intentionally shifted, this season, away from direct seeding as much as possible, opting instead to transplant seedlings started in the greenhouse. Transplanting helps us get ahead of the weeds, enables us to more precisely space the plants in the rows, and the greenhouse’s limited real estate helps us stagger plantings so that everything doesn’t mature at once. All of which means there will be waves of planting for several weeks to come. The “three sisters” project — an ancient companion planting concept integrating corn, beans and squash — is ready for the second phase now that the corn has emerged from the ground on its way to offering itself as a trellis for the beans. All that, and the sweet potato slips ordered months ago are just now being shipped by the supplier.
Those provisos accepted, however, the garden is essentially underway. The fencing has been mended. The irrigation system, simplified by the addition of a new hydrant and made urgent by the premature advent of 90-degree days, has been reassembled. The beds, thanks to the new implements and design, have been created and largely filled. Weeding, the incessant pastime of summer, is underway.
And though it always feels like we are behind — the obligatory neurosis of farming — the reality is that we are right on schedule. At least our schedule. In the rarified environment of the greenhouse we have, since early March, sown, we have watered, we have managed the temperature and the timing. In recent weeks we have opened the garden soil and nestled the juvenile plants into place. And now we’ll see. We’ll see if anything grows or fruits, despite the odds. “Odds” because it’s all a major gamble. Its not, in other words, smooth and confident sailing from here to harvest. Indeed, the bean leaves already look like Swiss cheese thanks to the appetite of some early pest. We’ve replaced half a dozen tomato plants because some pernicious varmint helped itself, never mind the fence. And the berry canes have taken it upon themselves to invade anywhere they so please. And already, barely into the season, we are trimming and hoeing and pulling, alternating between hope and despair.
We watch the forecast for rain. We spread a little more composted manure. We pull a weed. We wring our hands. We pray. Ultimately, we dig deeply into ourselves for the patience and larger view this kind of endeavor teaches and daily demands. I think of that biblical admission from the Apostle Paul — in a rare moment of humility and in the midst of one of those early church rivalries — that, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the growth.” Which is to say that none of us is in charge of it all. We do what we can do, and then let go. And wait.
And so, we’ll see what might grow — through our efforts and all those which are beyond us. We’ll see what might happen because of us, in spite of us, or coincidental to us.
We will do our part, acknowledging that the bigger part is out of our hands.
Which is humbling, of course, but the truth about most things in our life.
We sow a seed. Someone else waters. Something else — something marvelously, mysteriously, ineffably beyond us — gives it growth.
It’s maddening, I suppose, to good bootstrap-pulling, self-reliant delusionals reared to believe we can do anything and all;
…but it is, quite simply, the actual way things work. If I quiet myself enough to hear her, I hear the earth gently and lovingly chastising and coaxing me with the simple invitation:
“Get over yourself, take a deep breath, and simply participate in the wonder of what is transpiring.”
Well, we’ll see. Listening just now to the thundering rain that simultaneously nourishes, drowns, washes away and keeps us out of the garden, we can do little else.
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