I should have had my garden planted by now. It's almost May.
This happens almost every year. I have great intentions of starting early with putting out my garden. Things come up. I have distractions to see about. The weather doesn't cooperate at the times I could be doing garden work. My tiller has problems. Excuses abound. Time passes. The garden is still waiting. The seeds are still in the packet.
I have been very inconsistent during my adult life with doing the garden that I learned to do as a boy. When I was at home growing up, gardening was one of those very regular things we did. The garden had a lot to do with how well we ate during the season and through the winter to follow. The early years of my life, the early 1940s, were war years, and the whole country had a great patriotic emphasis on growing gardens and otherwise producing food. Producing food was an essential, just as surely as the aircraft factories and ammunition plants were part of the war effort.
As the family of a pastor and preacher, we have commonly moved to new places every four to six years. This moving has contributed to the inconsistency of my gardening as an adult. Since Methodist preachers usually move during the month of June, that meant that if we did our garden early, we would not get to benefit from much of it. We would have to leave the garden to the next preacher's family. That wasn't a bad thing and we didn't mind having others benefit from our work; but often we just didn't get much going in the garden if we knew we would be moving. We would be making preparations for our move. I have had years when I couldn't really get a garden going until June or July. That really limits what your garden can be. Sometimes we have just tried to set out a few tomatoes, in hopes that we can enjoy them before the fall frosts arrive.
For someone like myself, if we can't do a garden, it is like life is incomplete. It is like we have left out something big. I think the experience of growing things is very satisfying, and to not do it leaves an empty space in oneself.
Then there is the sense that doing a garden is kind of like cultivating a skill for life, or like working away at a developing project which one is trying to see through over time. Some of the things we try to do in life have to be cultivated and boosted along over long periods. One surge of effort doesn't accomplish the ends we seek. For example, when you are trying to work with people and trying to help people become the best they can be, it is a bit like working a garden. You are not in control of everything, you can't control when the rain falls or when the wind blows, but you can cultivate, and weed the rows, and dig in a little fertilizer from time to time. We don't control the growth of a garden; we try to work cooperatively with the secrets and lively qualities of nature to help our plants grow and produce. We try to help our growing plants tap into the creative resources. We don't create the growth ourselves, but we can do certain things to stimulate the plants and help them keep connected with their nutrients, and possibly enhance their environment for thriving.
When I was growing up, we always had a big garden. There would be eight long rows of potatoes, six to eight rows of sweet corn, six to eight rows of beans (often Kentucky Wonders), a row or two of tomatoes, beds of lettuce, radishes (white and red), onions, carrots, beets, cucumbers, cabbages, and, in the later part of the season, sweet potatoes and turnips.
We also had berry bushes and plants, raspberries and huckleberries. Out on the hills and along the fence rows, we'd usually have blackberries and a few gooseberries. Some of my friends have trouble understanding why I love gooseberry pie. I'll admit it is pretty tart. But Beulah Prophet makes delicious gooseberry pie.
At home, we often had some short rows of popcorn in the fields or in the garden, and a couple of years Dad put out some peanuts. I thought they were a success, but I guess Dad didn't, or that they were too much trouble. We soon let the peanuts fall aside. Strangely, we never had squash or okra in our garden at home. As an adult I spent many years in east Arkansas, where okra and squash are staples. We also never tried rhubarb on the farm, although we always bought rhubarb from other growers. We did do watermelons and pumpkins. Of course, to us Ozarkers, back then, a pumpkin was a "punkin" -- we didn't know there was a pump in it.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 05/03/2017