Hands on the land

[the old garden mid-summer with exuberant lavender bush in the foreground, pepper plantation mid-photo and potatoes back, 2007]


In a few words, I miss my garden.

For fourteen years, I put in a garden and enjoyed its produce: lettuce, broccoli, green and yellow beans, heirloom tomatoes, tomatillos, assorted hot peppers, potatoes of various sorts, cilantro, parsley, asparagus, raspberries.... I enjoyed putting it in, to see the rows of little plants that would eventually bear all these goodies (despite my minimal weeding). It was wonderful to walk out the back door with a colander or sauce pan and fill it with the night's dinner.

As we would reach this time of year, I would pay special attention to the frost reports. Even now, two years later, my ears perk up and I think about how I would have to haul out the tarps and sheets to protect my still-green tomatoes from the frost.

I have given up on gardening here because of the pests — squirrels, Japanese beetles and I don't know what else. I am thankful for the parishioner who has been supplying me with fresh tomatoes and beans from his garden but I do still greatly miss getting my hands in the earth.

I kind of wonder if the next rector at the church I used to serve will also put in a veggie garden or will it continue to be a parish-activity? (They still tilled and planted it and then gave the produce away to local charity.)