Plant Something

I have tried this so many times. Growing things - flowers, vegetables, herbs. And I am trying again this year.

Pictures pop up in my social media feeds of my former attempts. A small tomato plant on my office desk near a window just before Covid stopped everything. Too Shady. A row of herbs on my kitchen windowsill back in 2016. Over-watered? Under-watered? Still not sure.

Now I’m back in the nursery, rubbing basil leaves between my fingers and smelling its sweetness begging to be mixed with tomatoes and mozzarella. Looking at all the colors of petunias: red, pink, purple, yellow, striped. Hearing the breeze blow through the rows and rows of small Japanese maple trees.

All this reminds me of childhood. Early in the spring, when it was still chilly at night, my father would gather us kids for flower planting. He’d picked out a few types. I remember marigolds, zinnias, and portulacas. He poured soil into tin foil containers. We made holes with our tiny fingers and carefully drop in the seeds. Then they would sit on the windowsill, carefully watered and watched. Until one day miniscule shoots and leaves popped up.

This was miraculous for us city children. And when it was finally warm enough, we transferred the little, green beings into the flower boxes on the terrace, seventeen stories up from the Manhattan streets. Every summer we had a small green Eden.

But I do not have my father’s green thumb. I kill plants – a lot. Even cactuses.

Carl is the master gardener. I just watch him and take lots of mental notes. Last spring, while we were still in the moving-in stage of our new house, we got a basil plant and it did live and produce pesto-y leaves all summer.

Now Carl has built me a raised herb bed out of a large dresser drawer. And in it are parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. There is also some cilantro, oregano and two kinds of basil. Nearby are two other raised beds, empty right now. We will be purchasing some tomato plants this weekend. We already started our cucumbers from seeds. We also started corn. I’m not sure how that will grow.

Gardening is definitely good for our health. The Mayo Clinic says so. It reduces stress and anxiety. And having a structured routine – aka watering and weeding – has been linked to improved mental health. And how wonderful it is to spend time out in the fresh air and sunshine. There are more than seventy million household gardens in this country.

But why do I do it? I am, after all, the Black Thumb, Bringer of Death. I was reading some articles on gardening inspiration when I came across a quote by poet Mary Sarton. “A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.”

And that made sense to me. Life is hard with lots of losses. At the risk of mixing my metaphors, look at baseball. When a player has a batting average of 300 or more, he is having an amazing season. That still means he is failing seven out of every ten times he’s at bat. That’s a lot more losses than wins. Ah, but sometimes he hits one up into the bleachers. He runs the bases all the way to home amid deafening cheers.

There are home runs in our lives too. First kisses. New jobs. new homes. They don’t happen by accident. They are the result of planting seeds in our life and nurturing seedlings. There are definitely fewer shoots than seeds. And fewer flowers too. But eventually there are flowers.

The ancient Roman poet Ovid described the festival of Floralia which honored the flower/fertility goddess Flora. The celebrants dressed in bright colors, drank alcohol, and released rabbits because they are, well, very fertile.

Hoping this new garden will be a green triumph set against my many agricultural losses, I will don an orange tee shirt, drink a beer and NOT release by pet rabbit Chester Bunnington. It wouldn’t help, he’s no longer fertile. I’ll bury a symbolic paper bunny under the herbs and recite two lines from Charlotte Smith’s 18th century poem “Flora.”

Flora descends, to dress the expecting earth,
Awake the germs, and call the buds to birth.

How are you dressing the earth? What buds do you want to call to birth? I want to hear all about your plans to grow something! Anything!