February Garden
By Bill Polak, Madisonville Community Garden Coordinator
Frankly, you like dirt. You're wild about manure. And you admire and encourage worms, too. It would seem you're hardly fit for decent society. One would think you'd be shunned, avoided, relegated to obscurity. But luckily, because of your predilections you also grow obscenely luscious tomatoes, saintly basil, mega-squash by the bushel, peppers sweet as honey or hot as hades, carrots that crunch like pond ice cracking, peas that melt into the tongue, beans that... well, you get the idea...Sharing, you are·saved by the bounty. Kids don't run away and neighbors speak kindly of you. You are more than tolerated, you are accepted, pressed to the warm bosom of humanity, treated more or less like any other citizen, flaws and all. Which is as it should be, no? Maybe you were never any good at making money, but you always eat like a king, and you therefore like to think you comport yourself like a king, too, even when you're on your knees in the dirt saying hello to Mr. Worm...
Gardening has much to recommend it, practitioners will attest. Virtues like patience, persistence, and perspicacity can grow right alongside the green and leafy rows. Gardens throughout the ages have provided solace, been sites of respite from the more bothersome aspects of life... they are places of where you have room to breathe.
Ongoing truths are played out for all to see there, such as the great wheel of the seasons arcing over the lesser wheel of the day, and the cycles of water and elements steadfastly seeking a balance. That despite the ever more encompassing explications of both scientists and theologians, the life force remains thrilling and ineffable. A corn and an eggplant grow side by side and yet pull such wildly different fruits from the earth... How could one not conclude that diversity is natural and to be embraced?
Winters hereabouts sport snow, ice, and a low and sad-sack sun. Sit a while in a garden in the heart of this time and there's no question that it's deader than a doornail. Kaput. Blotto... It could be so disheartening. But even then, in the desolation, Spring is an element of faith, a potentiality biding its time with a nearly inaudible hum in the crypt. Wrap yourself in anticipation. And perhaps when Spring finally does flex and stumble in we'll play the old trick on some kids again. We'll get them to stick dumb hard little seeds in the ground and they'II see those seeds, quite miraculously, sprout and grow and pony up sweet peas or radishes or pinto beans, whatever. The trick being that the kids probably won't realize for years that the seeds of gardening have been planted in them and will come back again no matter how hard the winter. Hey, pass it on...