I dug up a potato in the garden yesterday. It's not one of the seed potatoes I planted and are growing so slowly I expect they'll all die before they see the sun. This is a potato from last year's crop, accidentally left to winter in the soil. I'm going to eat it for lunch.
And that's the sum total of my harvest so far. It could very well be the total of my harvest all summer--you just don't know, you know?
That's gardening--it's all about hope. Of course there's some work involved--hauling, digging, planting, mulching and weeding, to name a few manners of work. Since this sort of work requires bending, squatting, lifting and walking, you could call it a workout and skip the gym. I don't think many people garden for the exercise, though--I've known a lot of plump-ish gardeners but never heard them mentioning they do it for the "great abs". "Great tomatoes," maybe.
You may think that with modern technology there's no need for hope in gardening. Brocolli infested with aphids? Blast 'em off with the hose. Armadillo digging holes in the okra? Put out repellent. Lettuce looking yellow? Toss on some fertilizer. The general attitude seems to be that we're mankind and we're the boss of nature. We can have anything we want, and if it doesn't come naturally, run to the Wal-mart and buy it.
Taking a walk around the streets where I work, I pass by several large office buildings. Each has their plantings out front--beds of pansies, ornamental cabbages, alyssum and geraniums. They're lovely year round, and they give a pleasant smile to the brown granite and glass boxes they adorn. But here's the thing--twice a year or more, sometimes at the height of their beauty, they're completely dug up and replaced! I went by one day and noticed the alyssum was absolutely gorgeous, and went by the next and it was all gone! If I'd only known, I'd have dug some up and took it home.
What's your problem, you say? Don't gardeners do the same thing? No! We don't dig up things just because the calendar says to. The calendar is man-made, remember? If a tomato plant is still setting fruit in July do we plow it under to plant the fall turnips? Maybe some people do--commercial farmers have to--but not gardeners. Not me.
Gardening--aka hope--relies a lot on patience. Right now my carrots are feathery little sprigs. There's not nearly as many as I'd planted, and the space could be better employed by planting a summer crop of squash. A single armadillo or a wandering cow could wipe them all out. Even myself, with a careless swing of the hoe, could smash them into oblivion; some other human could mow them down and not even realize what he'd done. They can't be replanted--carrot time is over for north Texas.
But until that happens, I'm going to let them grow. They may be tough or bitter; they may be sweet and delicious. I have to wait to find out, but I have no other choice. I can't hire a landscape service to rip up the dirt and put in a new crop--planting time is over and anyway, I don't want their showy petunias or short-lived geraniums. I want my carrots; they're all I have left. I'll give them time to grow.
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