Garden is where the heart is
May 14, 2009 in: Margin Call
The sun broke through the light haze of a July morning in Northwest Missouri.
It was Fourth of July and with family visiting, we were up early to get the most out of the day.
I ventured out to the garden, the sense of expectation building as I walked down the green bean row to peek under the leaves. So excited to see the tender beans, just barely big enough to harvest, I dashed back to the house.
“Emily,” I called to my 13-year-old niece, “we have to pick green beans!”
I headed to the closet for an ice cream bucket to hold the bounty. We’d need at least two, maybe even three.
Behind me, Emily groaned. “Do we have to?”
I stopped rummaging and looked at my niece rubbing her sleepy eyes. In that moment, I realized that the transformation was complete. Not so long ago, I had been a grumpy teenager complaining about working in the garden. Now, here I was — I had become my mother.
And, I decided, it wasn’t so bad. Those tasty green beans would more than make up for any unpleasantness. I slipped my arm through the bucket handle. “No, Emily, you don’t have to. I’ll be able to pick them.”
With a happy sigh, she went in search of breakfast and I skipped out to the garden.
It’s amusing how the chores that used to be such a drudgery have become a delight. I would ponder the irony, but there’s no time. The radishes need to be thinned, weeds must be hoed and the strawberries are starting to ripen.
As much work as it is, the little garden at my house would look paltry next to Mom’s plot, carved out of the corner of the corn field. Her garden started early with leaf lettuce, then overflowed with tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, bursted with melons and corn and lasted late into fall with pumpkins and squash.
These days, gardening is fashionable again as a way to cut food costs and for the truly trendy, a way to go green, eat local and save the environment.
On one level, Mom’s garden was purely practical. She spent hot summer days canning vegetables, so that during the cold days of winter we had food to eat. As a child, I understood the motivation of economics.
On another level, though, her garden was spiritual. Now I know why Mom started studying seed catalogs in January and pestered Dad to get the soil tilled as soon as it was dry enough. It’s the same reason that as soon as I get home from work, I put on my grubby tennis shoes and grab a shovel.
Mom had a plaque that read, “The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the bird for mirth. One is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.”
For me, it’s also the place I feel nearest Mom’s heart.
