Morning in Vermont

It is a quiet morning here in Vermont. H and I walked the cats in the yard. There was something that got their attention. It had walked along the garage and through the corn which is now about 7 feet high-- as Mom reminded me: "as high as an elephant's eye."  They tracked it happily, looked longingly at the pear tree as a place to climb, and fantasized about a trip through the cemetery to visit friends.

The sun gold tomatoes are doing well but the Romas are sluggish - probably because they are trapped between the 6 foot vines of the sun golds and the patty pan squash and a hedge of dahlias that is just starting to flower purple. The winter squash that was struggling with beetles for the first 6 weeks of its life has now gone wild and is sending runners into the corn and the rhubarb, and down the hill toward the brussel sprouts. I hope the eating is worth it. There is a lesson I have to relearn every year--no matter how much room I give the plants at the beginning, they will be crowded by midsummer and jungled by the time of harvest.  Weeding is now nearly impossible without a machete and truth be told, I haven't the time to do what is needed.

A garden is a series of life lessons and providing adequate room for the plants is only one. As I am about to embark on another trip to spend some time with Mom and teach the first class, I am struck by the balance of time allotted to planting vs. harvesting in my life. I have so far avoided the obsession with seed catalogs in the Spring, but the desire to plant is visceral. I can spend entire days lost in preparing the dirt and digging and weeding with bare hands. My back is usually pretty sore, but I am far more flexible as summer comes and I have been more mobile than is my winter pattern. As with most other gardeners, my ambition often exceeds my ability to maintain what I have planted, and by now the hanging plants we bought to prettify the place for the wedding, are pretty peaked. The stone circle on which I lavished early attention hasn't had a single weed pulled and there is still a plant that never got planted, in its pot buried in the shade where it seems to be hanging on to life. The house plants are surviving outside in the shade on neglect and the occasional spray of water; in fact, they are thriving.

But with harvest beginning, I am finding little time to prepare for canning and preserving and freezing what I have worked so hard on. I put up 18 cups of basil into 10 snack bags of pesto earlier this week, and 10 cups of rhubarb are in the freezer. I have an enormous bowl of early apples and have yet to start thinking about preparing them for sauce or pies. I have been keeping up with the relatively limited production of patty pan squash by giving most of it away. The tomatoes sit in two containers - one whole and one of splits that are overripe but will make a good cooked meal.  I will take much of it down to New York, and friends will enjoy what I can't prepare for winter. I am relieved that the potatoes, winter squash, brussel sprouts and second crop of apples have yet to be ready for harvest. Perhaps there will be more time in September to do what is needed.

So why do I do all the work of preparing the soil when there is never enough time for adequate harvesting? There is of course, pleasure in the pure work of preparation. It is never so clear in the rest of my life, that the work I put in "bears fruit". There is a direct connection between effort expended and the results on the table. And there is that reminder again, every time I take out a freezer pack of corn or rhubarb and use it for a winter meal. But there is another secret pleasure in this. I spent much of my young adulthood convinced that I had a brown thumb, that I couldn't keep a plant alive. Now it is clear, between the garden and the orchids that keep re-blooming, that something is different. Part of that is a reminder about how important the things we take for granted are for our survival...good soil and light even support plants that are neglected. But part of that is also a reminder that I have changed. Living here has made a difference in me.  It has allowed me to pay closer attention to the shape of the weather and where the water will gather or drain. It has made watching for the weather of real importance --not just a casual exercise in what shoes to wear to work. But when people say that we don't change as we get older, that we just become more of what we were, this is a marker that the things we love and turn our attention to, can allow us to reinvent ourselves, and heal the scars we have carried forth.  That's a big conclusion for a little thing like pulling weeds.