An Unwanted Garden

In a few weeks, my daughter will excitedly deliver to me an assortment of tomato, pepper and other plants which she has grown from seeds.  She will do this despite my specific instructions to the contrary.    She will set them on my patio table, knowing that while I don’t want them, I will not waste them.  She knows very well that I will grumble, mumble and complain and offer a sarcastic thank you.

My daughter has developed a love for gardening.  She also has a green thumb.  I have neither.  My wife loves potting and re-potting plants.  I do not.  It’s true that I occasionally help her.  Why?  The answer is obvious.  Just because.  I guess I don’t mind, but to say that I enjoy it would be quite a stretch.  If I’m totally honest, it seems like a lot of work for a little reward.  There must be an easier way.  Having said that, I admit that I will enjoy the greenery and the blooming flowers, which will be the result of her labors. She will talk to me about how well the plants are doing, and I will stare blankly into space.  I will also begrudgingly accept the presence of her extra flower pots, plant food, gloves, hand rakes, and other tools of the trade occupying space in my garage and workshop.  Over the 43 years we have been married, I have objected.  The longer we are married, the less she reacts to my objections.  Oh well.

But back to the tomato plants.  I am not a gardener.  Things I plant either die or act dead and produce less than they should.  It just might be due to the fact that I am not a gardener.  I really don’t know much about it and I am not anxious to learn.  I rarely add fertilizer because it just seems that if the plants want to grow, they should grow on their own.  Another factor might be that last year, I planted everything with a post-hole digger rather than tilling the ground.  Time was of the essence  and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  My wife was not as convinced as I was.  I did till the ground after I had planted to loosen the soil, but I don’t think that works as well.  And the nice round holes looked like perfect receptacles into which I could drop the unwanted plants.

And then there is the water issue.  Not wanting to plant the garden too close to the house where the grandchildren play, I put the garden at the very back of my lot, approximately 187 feet from my back door.  I know because that’s how much garden hose I had to run to set up a makeshift watering system.  Otherwise, I would be lugging five-gallon buckets of water up that little incline in my back yard.  But my watering system worked.  As a matter of fact, it was a bit ingenious, at least in my opinion.  I attached a small round sprinkler to the garden hose, dropped it in the middle of my small square of garden and simply turned on the faucet.  It takes the water about 20 seconds or so to make it up the hill and to start doing its work.  I then go inside for a few minutes or watch the mist from the patio until sufficient water has covered the soon to be harvested crop.  Confession.  I was more excited about my homemade irrigation system than I was about the garden.

Water is not cheap where I live.  It is plentiful, but it is not cheap.  I guess I could dig a well to irrigate my 20 feet by 20 feet oasis, but that would suggest that this garden is wanted.  It is not.  So I grumble each time I watch the water and my money go into the soil and pray for daily rain.

And there’s the grass problem.  My garden has more grass than most areas of my back yard.  Of course it does.  You get grass where you don’t want grass and where you want a nice cushioned lawn, you get weeds.  Some days it makes me want to plow my entire yard and plant a garden in it.  Then I could pull up all the garden plants and be left with an abundance of grass.  It just might work.

It’s probably obvious by this point that this garden will not produce enough of a harvest for me to participate in the local farmer’s market.  Not even close.  I will end up buying pretty tomatoes at the market to supplement the ugly tomatoes that I grow.  And as I walk through the market, I will wonder why my produce does not even look like it came from the same planet as theirs.  As a matter of fact, my produce looks like it came from Bizarro World.  (You Superman comic buffs will understand what that means.)

My pepper plants will flourish.  That makes perfect sense.  I don’t particularly care for pepper so it is the one thing that will produce for months.  I do like tomatoes.  I like them in a salad, on a tomato sandwich and on a bologna sandwich.  Since I do like them, they will not do as well.  It just works that way.  And the cucumbers (don’t think I mentioned those before) spread everywhere.  They don’t seem to understand that I have tilled exactly the amount of square footage necessary for this garden.  The cucumbers (and the squash) are simply doing their own thing and spreading in any direction they choose.  I have concerns that they will eventually climb my neighbor’s fence.  I don’t know how he would feel about that when all he could get from them would be undersized cucumbers and knobby squash.  And don’t ask about the cabbage experiment.  The few heads of cabbage were pretty to look at and fun to harvest, until we cut one open.  There was animal life in the cabbage, making it unfit for human consumption.  I’ll leave it at that.

Have I mentioned that this is an unwanted garden?  Did I tell that the only reason it exists is because I can’t, in good conscience, waste the plants my daughter has delivered?  Did I mention that she delivers these over my objections?  Maybe my garden is rebelling against my attitude.   Maybe my garden senses my indifference at best and animosity at worst.  I don’t talk to my garden.  I do talk about my garden in unflattering terms.  But then you know that already.

So, to my dear daughter, if you’re reading this, please do not bring plants.  Give them to someone who will enjoy and appreciate them.  I know you won’t listen and I know you will soon be delivering a summer’s worth of hard work to my back door.  You are a Jedi gardener.  I am not.  I am proud of what you accomplish.  So I realize that all I’m really accomplishing with this blog is to get an early start on grumbling about this soon to be planted, yet unwanted garden.

But there’s something else about this garden.  And it’s a good thing.  I failed to mention earlier that my Dad was an amazing gardener.  He loved it.  Even in his later years, he treasured the time spent in his garden even when the sun beat down and even when he probably should have been inside.  I encouraged him because I believe we should do the things that bring us joy as long as our bodies and minds allow us to do them, even if there is some risk associated with our actions.  Dad loved his garden.  Dad knew how to garden.  And he produced a bountiful harvest.  He had the touch.  I do not.  But I know and take great pride in the fact that Dad’s skill and love of gardening have contributed to my daughter’s skill and love of gardening.  Thanks Dad for passing the torch to our granddaughter.

So, when I grab a hoe from my garage, or when I roll that heavy orange tiller up that hill, I think about Dad. (Oh, by the way, it was my Dad’s tiller.)  I think about the joy that he experienced from gardening.  Even though it was hard work, it was a relaxing break from the pressures and strain of driving that big rig for 60 years.  It was an escape for him and he was a better man for it.  And though I don’t have the love for working the ground that he did, I feel that in some small way, I am a little more like my Dad by piddling in this garden.  And on those days when the first tomatoes come in, I will triumphantly deliver them to the kitchen.  And I’ll do it with a smile on my face and sense a little of the satisfaction that I know Dad felt when he did the same.

So Dad, I can’t say that I love this little garden.  I can’t say that I look forward to planting it.  But I can say that I cherish the way that it makes me think of you, and  that I get a little misty eyed when I think of how much my daughter is like you.  You’d be proud of her garden.  You’d look at mine, and you’d tell me what I needed to do to make it better.  So I’ll keep trying.