Seeds of Connection
When I was a young teenager I went to live with my aunt and uncle for a bit. A typical kid of the late 70s and early 80s, I had to get up early to catch the bus to school. In the winter, it was full dark out, but by May the sun was in the tree line but still very low in the sky. I would wake up, drag my hormone-riddled carcass out of bed, get dressed and brush my teeth. I’d gather my books and head downstairs for a bowl of cereal before heading to the bus. When I got down to the kitchen my aunt would already be there. Smoking a cigarette, drinking her second cup of coffee and reading the Cape Cod Times, well into the paper. Reading about Carter this and OPEC that. She had clearly been up for a while. It was crazy to me. Why was she up? I could get myself to school. She didn’t cook me breakfast or check my homework. That winter and spring I swore that I would never be the person that woke up that early. Up before 9 am if I didn’t have to be? No sir. Awake and putting the dishes away before the sun even came up? Fools, all that didn’t take advantage of a grownup’s awesome ability to sleep as late as they wanted. The absolute only reason to be up that early was to go fishing. No other reason was acceptable.
Forty years later I am that fool I swore never to be. As a steward with the merchant marines, I am up at 4:30 am every day. My time at sea averages 90 days or so, and for the entirety of my hitch I am up at that time. It has become physically impossible for me to sleep past 5:00 in the morning, even when I am home. I’ve come to accept this reality and while I am not necessarily happy with it, I have turned it to some good uses. I generally get more done before 9 am than most others get done all day long. One of those things is gardening.
Now, I’m no gardening guru. I enjoy gardening and I especially like when things go well. I love when the seedlings pop out of the soil or when the first rhubarb crown makes its appearance. I enjoy the anticipation of the asparagus starting to poke out of the soil and how pretty the eggplant flowers are. I love to eat my Cherokee Purple tomatoes and fresh beans and by god I grew the most fantastic cantaloupe a couple of years ago. I love when my niece comes and helps to plant seeds and I love when her cousins come and help harvest. I love going to the garden shops and picking out my live plants. I love perusing seed catalogs to decide what wacky plant I’ll try this year. I always try an out-of-the-ordinary plant and so far, they’ve all been a bust. Okra, artichoke, some kind of funky squash I bought in California, but it’s always fun to try. I’ve been at it a while and I’m decent, but gardens require some level of care and I’m at sea. A lot. This leads to its own set of challenges. Let’s say that sometimes I am happy that purslane and dandelions are edible.
Three years ago, I planted everything on Mother’s Day weekend. I’ve got seven raised beds and I spent a weekend carefully placing my heirloom tomatoes, English peas, zucchini, pole beans, lettuce and numerous other plants in an arrangement that would be both beautiful and beneficial. After securing a promise from my son that he would indeed maintain the garden and make sure everything went well I headed to work. I would be there from end of May until the middle of August. With everything planted, the garden soil well-nourished and the sprinklers set up, off I went. I was optimistic the garden would be fabulous, I had two sons and a wife who would unquestionably help make sure everything went well. They liked to eat everything as much as I did, after all. In July, I got a message from my neighbor who regularly walks by to tell me how great the garden looks. It was thick and lush and green, she said. I received that message with pride and even made sure I thanked my son for a job well done.
I got home at the end of August. It was a red eye from San Francisco and when I got home, I fell into my pillowtop mattress and slept for a day and a half. When I got up and showered and dressed, I went out to the garden. It was amazing! Thick with greenery, I could smell the chlorophyll creating energy. Dense with leaves, it was sight to behold.
And it was all weeds. Don’t ask me what kind. Weeds. Big weeds, thick weeds, tall weeds, lush weeds, strangling weeds. Weeds. Turns out my son did nothing. It also turns out that that kind of care is exactly the kind of care weeds love. I found some shriveled, barely-hanging-on tomato plants laying down and weakly reaching for the light but it was clear they wouldn’t make it. Even the zucchini couldn’t survive the onslaught of whatever weed crowded them out. I wasn’t even angry. This is part of the life of a sailor. C’est la vie. Such is life.
Which leads me to 2021. Another year of Covid protocols, of reduced interaction with the rest of humanity, another year of worry and stress and missing in-person conversations. This year I’m going to take full advantage of waking up before any reasonable person should. I’m going to go for a jog, have a cup of coffee and croissant and spend each morning working in the garden (one of those statements is a lie, I’ll let you guess which one). This year I have arranged it so that I will be home from the middle of April until almost the end of October. That means I’ll be home for an entire growing season. Last year I prepped the beds permaculture-style and this year I’ll be home to plan and prepare for the whole summer. I’ve got a business to run and that’s the main reason I’ll be home, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to shepherding my garden through the season.
I’ll be out there every day. Weeding, pruning, checking for pests. When one of the neighbors goes by, I’ll wave and maybe we’ll have a chat. I’ll have some leftover seeds that I’ll share with folks who ask for them and in general be neighborly. I’ll flirt with the divorced lady who walks every morning with her dog and chat with the neighbor before he heads off to run his restaurant. I have a standing rule that if you help weed you can take some fruits or vegetables if you wish. I’ll make this garden fantastic this year. Giant tomatoes, 10-foot pole beans, zucchini the size of my ego.
My garden will serve a bigger purpose as well, one that is not so obvious. I put my garden in the front yard. It’s on full display. It’s the Vermonter in me. Mine is the last house you see when you leave the neighborhood. I’m the Garden Guy. People ask me questions I cannot answer. Neighbors talk about the amount of plastic nip bottles that seem to proliferate at the corner. Someone once asked if she could take some rhubarb leaves to use for pottery. I have patted lots of dogs, admired babies and given away plenty of strawberries. In this time of Covid, my garden has become a socially-distanced gathering place. I can be in my garden, weeding, plucking and pruning and folks can be on the edge of the street, more than a requisite six feet away. We can talk about things that interest us – gardening, eating, fishing, the weather – and in doing so maintain a connection with somebody outside of our Zoom conferences or the narrow confines of our houses. My garden allows me to meet my neighbors and make new friends. It gives me the opportunity to see the workings of my community and to share in its stories.
I enjoy chatting with Skip, an older gentleman who lives around the corner. He’s also a mariner, retired, who worked on tugboats. He walked with his dog, a German Shepard. The dog was old when I met him and padded slowly behind Skip as they ambulated around the neighborhood. He was sweet and always just sat down and patiently waited when Skip and I chatted. Then one day Skip was walking alone, and I knew that his dog had finally crossed the Rainbow Bridge. We spent 15 minutes talking about what a great dog he had been. How slow Skip walked so he could keep up and I listened to Skip talk about his puppyhood memories and we both grieved, me a little and Skip a lot.
Or my neighbor Lance, once politically active, now a small business owner. When it snowed, he came and used his snowblower on my driveway. When I baked homemade bagels, I brought his family a half dozen. One day he asked me how I had dealt with my wife’s cancer. He asked because he now had cancer and he was scared and wanted to share that he was scared, and he wanted to know that he would be all right. It was a private, emotional conversation on the grass by the side of the road. The only witnesses to that conversation were the rhubarb and asparagus shoots. When his treatment was over and he was safe and well on his way to being healthy, he crossed the street, we hugged, and I sent him home with some just-picked asparagus.
Lisa lived two streets over and every morning at 5:45 she would come trucking by with her headphones on and a bottle of water heading out of the neighborhood for her morning exercise. On her way back we would frequently talk about how good the tomatoes were looking or how I just couldn’t get the blueberry bushes to take. In the evening she would walk by with James, her boyfriend. One day Lisa walked by with James at 5:30 a.m. instead of 5:30 p.m. How happy she was that James had finally moved in and they had gotten engaged. Now instead of coming over after work and walking the neighborhood before dinner, they would be getting up together and walking the neighborhood before they went to work. I fully expect that at some point they’ll be walking a dog and not long after that they’ll be pushing a stroller.
The Coast Guard families that come and go like wildflowers.
The kids that were in middle school when I moved in and who I watched get on the bus at 6 am now have finished college and moved away.
These human interactions and connections happen because I’m up at the crack of dawn and working in my garden. And these human interactions are important.
Covid has been tough. Mental health problems are on the rise. Depression and loneliness are becoming things that more and more people have to deal with. Most people who are taking the Covid protocols seriously interact with maybe six people. They live their life in the living room of their house and can’t wait to get out into the real world again. They know I have a science tour business and I am certainly not shy about my political beliefs. More than one discussion was had about Jill Stein. They know I’m willing to talk about anything and listen as well. If my little raised bed garden allows us to interact with each other in a meaningful way, then I have accomplished something far more important than the ability to make a salad or provide food. I feel like I’ve contributed in a way that has real meaning outside of my little half acre. And that makes me very happy.
