The Humble Acceptance of How Little We Can Do

And then the hail fell.

 

Since early March we have been diligently sowing seeds in the greenhouse, watering and watching, coaxing and smiling as the stems curled up through the potting soil and stretched their way into true plants.  With spring came clearing and reviving beds in the garden, loosening the soil, spreading compost; readying.  Since mid-May we have been transplanting seedlings from the protection of the greenhouse to the expansive vulnerabilities of the garden – row upon row like a marching band in careful formation.  

 

Gradually the spaces were fully populated, the irrigation tapes positioned, and the weeding undertaken in earnest.  Thick squash stems supported wide leaves; green and yellow bean bushes rose and stretched; small purple kale stems peaked through the veiling grass; and tomatoes wondrously began to swell on the vines.  Never mind the cacophony of weeds and intruding grasses, it was beautiful – perhaps the handsomest garden expanse since we moved to Taproot Garden 10 years ago.  Guests nodded in vegetable envy.  Family marveled at the investment of energy and time and wondered aloud what we would possibly do with all the harvest. 

 

And after years of waiting and watching, the fruit trees were promising reward.  Apples and pears, apricots and plums were growing heavy on the branches.  And cherries.  It’s hard to say how the cherries had become the Holy Grail of our orcharding, but somehow they had risen to that nobility.  Perhaps it is my affection for a good cherry pie, and Lori’s constant indulgence.  We had planted and waited, and this year the bushes and trees were covered – announced in the spring by profligate blossoms, and answered by plumping berries.  We had tasted them the day before and they were ripe and ready.  We would pick them the following evening – the cherries, and the remaining honeyberries nearby.

 

And then Tuesday afternoon the sky darkened, the wind whipped, the lightening ripped open the thundering sky, and the hail assaulted the landscape.  Pea-sized, then marble-sized; on and on in a deluge of destruction.  It pounded the deck; covered the lawn; buried the flower bed and ravaged the potted plants.  We stood at the window, silently and helplessly watching the destruction.  To step outside would surely be injurious.  And to what end?  Covering would be futile; there was no way to drag it all inside.  And then, as suddenly as it had begun – what had it been?  Fifteen minutes?  Thirty? – the conflagration of ice was over.  An ominously silent stillness replaced the deafening percussion.  And all around us spread a carpet of leaves and limbs, exploded blossoms and ice. Fearfully approaching the garden, we opened the gate and stepped into a dystopian wasteland.  Stems stripped of their leaves.  Stalks broken into pieces or pulverized out of existence.  And the cherry trees robbed of their sweet promise.  Not a berry remained.  London after the German bombings couldn’t have looked more ruined, nor the scene of a biblical plague.  It was an open-air morgue of the shredded and maimed victims of a meteorological assault.  

 

In the hours and days since the hailstorm all we have been able to say is, “we’ll see.”  Life, we know, seeks life.  Bodies lean toward healing.  We’ll see what resurrects after this Good Friday affront.  Maybe much; maybe nothing. We’ll see.  The fruit is certainly gone, but perhaps the vegetables will renew.

 

Regardless, we do not need to wait to see afresh how limited is our control of those things that matter.  We can do what we can do for our bodies, our kids, our careers, our gardens, but neither good intention nor vigilant attention insures a fruitful outcome.  Viruses come out of nowhere.  Choices in which we are not involved change our course.  Hail falls here but not 4 miles away.  If, as Tennyson observed, nature is “red in tooth and claw,” it is also flayed in gale and icy stone.  Standing amidst the vegetative rubble, we comprehend again the essential impetus of our efforts, and the necessary ministrations beyond those beginnings, but above all the puniness of our powers to bring it all to fruition.  Life is infinitely larger than we are; far beyond us, the movements and machinations of the universe – until they reach in or down or whatever their directional approach, and caress or coax into ripeness or twist and crush into oblivion.  

 

We will do what we can. 

 

And then we’ll see.

Weeding and Reaping

The summer solstice has passed, and summer officially welcomes us.  The new season arrived with thunder, lightning, rain and…cold.  It’s an ironic beginning – the accouterments of summer having baked us dry for weeks – but the unseasonable break was a welcomed exhalation.  We could relax the seemingly continuous irrigation of the garden and the hand watering of the potted flowers that had depleted the rain barrels, at least for a time.

 

We are now well into the first harvest of the season:  weeds.  Having been preoccupied with filling the next row – sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings from the greenhouse, caging and trellising tomatoes – the first rows were left vulnerable.  Reaching the end of the planting and looking back to where we began, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the profligate precociousness of the more native species resident in the soil.  That, coupled with a period of other-focused neglect, the garden is a riot of this and that threatening the viability of all our good intentions.  Grass is choking the chard.  Dandelions hide the okra.  Ragweed towers over the potatoes, giving them full view of the Colorado Potato Beetles that have chosen this moment to nibble at the latter’s leaves.  There is reclamation work to be done.  I know that scripture says, “what you sow is what you reap,” but that is only superficially accurate.  With all due respect to the Apostle Paul, I might amend his truism to say, “what you weed is what you reap.”  

 

Newly refocused, then, we lean in.  Pulling.  Hoeing.  Piling extracted encroachments.  I rediscovered beets yesterday, and curly kale I had forgotten I had planted.  And turnips actually ready to pull.  The initial sowing of carrots is likely lost, choked out by the competition, but there are additional seeds in reserve to which we can now pay more attention.  We often read how “nature abhors bare soil”, but it is always a marvel to witness afresh how many weapons nature keeps in its arsenal.  It’s impressive, even if its effectiveness means constant vigilance and labor.

 

In the end it is a valuable discipline – a reminder that starting is no predictor of finishing; that the giddiness of sowing and harvesting must be matched by the tenacity of tending throughout the season between. 

 

Paying attention.

Observing.

Intervening.

Protecting.

Providing.

Breaking a sweat.

 

Because the gardener who can’t be bothered with the hassle of the hoe won’t be bothered by any happiness of the harvest.