Life as Performance Art
GC Stoppel
Have a thought and take a teaspoon of pity on backyard gardeners this month. This is a difficult and trying time of year for those raising vegetables. June is full of angst and anxiety for the amateur farmer. We did not feel it back during a January blizzard when we carefully read through the seed catalogues fantasizing at the different variety of seeds we wanted. We made our selections, placed our order, and had visions of summer days growing food for the table, and extra produce to share with others.
A few weeks later when the big brown envelope full of seed packages arrived, we were jubilant and elated. After that came the fun of preparing the soil, fertilizing, making the rows and planting the seeds and plants. Tired muscles or not, we were having fun as we played in the dirt, knowing that we are getting back in touch with nature.
Two or three times a day we might slip outside to look over the vegetable plot, justifying it with the comment, “Just to see if anything has come up.” Finally, when the seeds germinated and came above ground, we still went out to the garden several times a day, “Just to see how things are looking,” we would tell our significant other. If all turns out well, in a few more weeks we’ll make that thrice daily trek under the guise of, “Just want to see if anything needs to be picked.”
But now, with Memorial Day behind us, we stand and lean on our hoe in angst and anxiety. Did we plant too many green beans? We ponder about what in the world will we do with them if it is a bumper harvest? We’ll need a bigger wheelbarrow to haul them to the kitchen door. And while we’re at it – a bigger freezer to store them all for the winter months.
We see that our beans are doing just fine, but three rows over, right in the middle of what is supposed to be a straight line of spinach, there is a four-foot-long bare spot. Surely, we planted the entire row. Maybe something is wrong with the soil. Do we give Popeye’s favorite veg another few days, or plant more seeds? Or perhaps we should plant something else.
We worry if we have watered too early or too late in the day; too much or too little water. We look at a hole in the garden that wasn’t there yesterday. We’ve been invaded by vermin. Like a Dalek going after Dr. Who we shout, “Exterminate! Exterminate!” or that the highly anticipated bumper crop of green beans will disappear. And with it, the remaining spinach, sweet corn, and summer squash.
There is nothing easy about having even a small vegetable garden. We wake up in the wee hours from a nightmare: Did we remember to fertilize? Did we put on too much or too little? Was it the right type? We have to work hard at making it look so easy, and we know we must remain modest, telling an admirer. “Well, it’s starting to come along.” And even if we are determined to win the purple ribbon for the biggest zucchini at the county fair, we don’t tell others of our dreams Pride and taking a tumble, and that sort of thing.
The garden work continues, and on some hot afternoons when the mosquitoes are buzzing about and the Japanese beetles are munching on leaves, we almost envy those cliff dwellers who live in the big city high rises. They’re the smart ones, you know contented to raise a couple of pots of cherry tomatoes on their porch.
For some reason this year has become more of a challenge than the previous ones, and it has nothing to do with the dry spell during May that has slithered into June. Like almost everything else, something as supposedly pleasurable as gardening has become a battlefield of politics, race, and gender. For example, there was the great divide over whether we should mow our lawns in May, and there was a movement toward “No Mow May”. Let the grass grow to accommodate the pollinators. Or better yet, rip out the Kentucky Blue or Park grass and make it into a native plant garden. Try getting that past the zoning officials who come round with their rulers and yardsticks, measuring the height of the grass, threatening to write a ticket unless we get outside right this very minute and start mowing. Or, neighbors who ask, with a tinge of sarcasm in their voice, “Raising a hayfield this year, are you?”
Hard on its heals came a flurry of articles on the internet that mowing a lawn and raising vegetables was White Privilege and Euro-centrism. Plant seeds that aren’t native to this country or Europe, and you’ll soon find an article about how it is nothing more than rabid, colonialist, culinary appropriation. Or so they would tell us.
There was another protracted series internet screeds from those in favor of composting and those who were opposed to it. Composting is good because it adds nutrients to the soil; composting is bad because it produces more CO2 and methane. Composters are warming the planet and melting glaciers and raising the sea level without a single care about those poor polar bears who are going to suffer because of your vegetable garden?
A year or so ago, during the Great Shut Down when some people had far too much time on their hands, a writer figured out how much CO2 we put into the environment by using a power mower to cut the grass on one acre. Another writer compared it to the estimated amount of CO2 we put into the environment using a push mower and breathing too hard. The push mower won, but good luck trying that experiment after No Mow May when the grass is nearly a foot tall.
You and I both know that a lot of the fussing and complaining and accusations we find on the internet is rubbish that is not fit for a compost pile. It is just some curdle-faced spoilsport, spewing their venom and trying to make us feel miserable for having a hobby we enjoy. Still, life was easier when we could go to a garden center and talk to the head of the fertilizer department, or pick up a pamphlet or two from the County Agent who knew about such things.
Of course the simple and best way of dealing with all of this prattle on line is to ignore it. Whether you mow or not is not going to either save or destroy the planet. All it does is make you feel virtuous or evil. Do yourself a favor and ignore it.
A good substitute is to remember the great food instruction from Coco Chanel: Eat fresh fruit in season. There you have it. If you get some beans, peas, tomatoes, or other vegetables, you get the pleasure of rushing them from garden to table. You can’t get much more fresh than that.