"'When the future seems either very bleak, or people are too depressed to imagine one, gardening gives you a toehold in the future'.... It can also help reconcile us to the inevitability of our demise. At the Barn garden, Tom Stuart-Smith told me that every spring... he goes around the garden with a notebook, to make plans about where to add things in the autumn. 'I think a lot about next year, but I also think, absolutely, about what it’s going to be like when I am dead,' he said. The future promised by a garden may not always be ours to enjoy, but a future there will be, with or without us in it.... Under the current circumstances, I have no great confidence that my mother will ever again travel to London and see this garden of mine. 'Have you room for a honeysuckle?' she wrote to me. I planted one in a sunny spot against the wall, in the hope that the near-invisible trellis of wires that I hammered to the brick will help it stand upright, as if it were doing so on its own."
From
"The Therapeutic Power of Gardening/Can anxious minds find solace working with plants? A therapist and her husband, a garden designer, say yes" by Rebecca Mead (The New Yorker).
Have you been gardening during the coronavirus lockdown?
ADDED: "Gardening has been a solace to so many... because it invokes the prospect of
some kind of future..." Invokes?! Should be
evokes. If The New Yorker is
already getting stuff like that wrong, the future looks kind of dismal!
ALSO:
From the New Yorker cartoon bank, there's this from May 2019 by Roz Chast:
If the trolls were saying "The world is falling apart, and YOU'RE GARDENING?!?" back in May 2019, imagine what they're saying in 2020.
Posts
76 comments:
Yes. That's why Michigan Gov Whitmer's ban on seeds and gardening things was so cruel and unnecessary back in April-May. Gardening wasn't hurting anything, and banning it hurt those who garden therapeutically. It made her look like a petty tyrant who wanted absolute control over everything her constituents could possibly do.
I think it was Martin Luther who, when asked, "What would you do today if you knew Jesus will return tomorrow?" replied, "Plant a tree."
At 118 degrees one doesn't garden but, come October, I'll be sowing some Swiss chard and potting a few tomato plants. Might do lettuce this year, too.
I've been digging the garden. My wife and daughter are the gardeners, and this year's garden and flower beds are the best ever. But even the sprinkler repair and boulder removal guy shares in the pride.
Gardening + Therapy
Gag me with a Smith&Hawkins English spade.
First of all, I once worked for Smith & Hawkins, Meade- so there's that. But I confess, I am starting to do a bit of fixing up our yard and just yesterday found myself at Lowes looking over plants and planters. Yes- I've got big plans.
Of course none of this would have happened if we had not shut down the entire world economy because of a virus that seems to be dangerous mainly for a small percentage of older people with pre-existing health problems. My industry was destroyed. So now I have a lot of time to create new landscapes. That is...as long as our neighborhood Cynthia does not bring out the HOA booklet and quote it to me.
If The New Yorker is already getting stuff like that wrong, the future looks kind of dismal!
If educated academic professionals are still relying on the NYT for their information, the future looks kind of dismal.
Maybe they are thinking about after the red counties have seceded. Trying to figure out how to grow your own food in New York City.
Gardening + Therapy
Gag me with a Smith&Hawkins English spade.
Sounds like an orchestral violinist listening to someone talk about the ethereal nature of Penderecki. You can tell a professional, but don't try to tell him much if you know what's good for you.
The goal of Leftist Collectivists is to remove hope.
People without hope might be fooled by false promises of future comfort.
Cloward-Piven and riots in American cities (controlled by Democratics) are a tactic.
Gardening is a nice way to encourage peasants to keep their heads down.
Hate for rights-holding citizens to look up and see the hatred oozing from the Leftist Collectivists.
Murtaugh: Why does God hate me?
Riggs: Hate him back.
I can't call it gardening these days; a couple of years of back-to-back ice storms took out major trees along our creek and property, completely changing our shade and sun, and offering us a mostly apocalyptic view of snags from our deck. We have been in slow reinvention and rehab ever since.
Even so, I will never forget the healing that happened nine months after my mama died as I dug in the deep dark silent earth to bury bulbs for the spring, i think i have relayed this before in these pages:
After mama's passing, I was aware early on that, while carrying on bravely in getting on with life, there was a big huge part of myself, a silent lion in the inner landscape of my heart that was not participating, mourning deep in the darkness of her cave. Once, hurrying in the shower to get ready for work, I made the mistake of checking in on that lion in my heart, and she devoured me in grief, i gasped and sobbed in the shower until the hot water turned ice cold.
So, whew! I left her be after that. Then, that fall, on my knees digging, I suddenly realized: All of me was doing this. All of me was here. My Lion was participating! Quietly, gently, out of the cave, my mourning lion had come out to join in, was soothed and reassured by the dark earth, the promise within it, and oh i was so blessed and whole in that hour, ever with me still.
Oh, yes. I put in about 1,000 sq ft of new gardens from April to June including about 300 natives rescued from the lot down the hill before they started construction. I noticed that many online nurseries were struggling to keep up with the deluge of spring orders and many plants were sold out much earlier than I would have expected and to my great disappointment. I much prefer browsing Wilson Bros gardens website to P******b.
I ordered all my fall plants last month as soon as they were available. If you want anything like peonies, lilies, or spring flowering bulbs which are generally sold in the fall, do it NOW.
Temujin -
I broke both my S&H digging spade (handle) and fork (tines) wrestling with rocks and tree roots here in TN. Not covered under the famous lifetime warranty because I bought them at the now-closed outlet store in Chicago.
Of course I’ve been gardening. By August, the pumpkins are like kinfolks, lazing around the terrace, driving up the water bill, and refusing to leave until October. The cukes are more like college summer girlfriends. The relationship reaches it’s height in early September and then it’s time to uproot it.
We garden every year.
The last of the tomatoes are still green, but most have been harvested. We found beefmasters at the nursery this year, our favorite kind of tomato. The haberneros are just turning color, they tend to keep coming until October in New England. Every year is a good pepper year. Great tomato and cucumber year, the gourds not so much. Our cucumbers are mostly yellow, but taste the same.
I garden for others. Last Christmas I heard my BIL complain about how hard it was to find pickled okra for his gumbo and Bloody Mary's. I just jarred my second crop yesterday and plan to give away the fruits of my labor in the near future. Gifts tie the past and future.
Gardening does look forward. Success. Productivity. All great aspirational qualities.
Tempered with reality. That's what most people need. Doses of reality. Things die, all the carrotts fail. Rabbits eat the new peas. Blight hit the tomatoes. All of that recalibrates your expectations about what is real. Life happens. Life is never Utopia. All days are good, some not as good, but being on top of the grass, with a realistic attitude, is a good day, no matter what is going on.
In the end, gardening (producing real wealth) gets you, out of, yourself. Always showing, you are not in charge. A more powerful force is in charge.
"From the New Yorker cartoon bank, there's this from May 2019 by Roz Chast"
I think the one on the right is named "Gahrie."
In the Black magic world of the Woke
It is white privilege to evoke:
The Future is something personal, you invoke.
I think it was Martin Luther who, when asked, "What would you do today if you knew Jesus will return tomorrow?" replied, "Plant a tree."
No.
However Martin Luther did say "First, to set fire to their [Jews'] synagogues or schools. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians."
I think the one on the right is named "Gahrie."
My right or their right?
In any case, none of them are fat enough, I never criticize anyone's gardening, and I think gardening is a good use of time.
But everyone loves a good White Knight Meade.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin. -Voltaire
Good Lord. Gardening *causes depression. Green Thumber privilege from the New Yorker.
I guess it's a sign of the times that people would rather engage in personal attacks than a debate on the issues.
I've been gardening for decades, I have a Troy-bilt rototiller, but this year is my last for awhile. The deer jumped the fence and chewed off the tops of the tomatoes. They did that last year for the first time, I guess it's a habit now. This year something—woodchucks?—ate the green tomatoes before I could harvest any. The ears of the corn did not fill well, and the silver queens did not set ears at all. A fungus or something ruined most of the potatoes.
All I really have to harvest is basil. Gardening has never made economic sense, but this level of failure is too much.
Reminds me of a visit to a small Utah Mormon town years ago. "Make sure you lock your car doors. Why isn't this a religeous town? Yes, but if you leave your doors unlocked you will find your back seat is full of bags of cucumbers!
Lighten up, Gah.
I always thought the garden 'trolls' on the cover of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass had a certain taunting quality.
Keith Richards on George Harrison: "He liked gardening more than anything... I guess the good die young, eh?"
I planted a bunch of sunflowers this year, and they're doing great. Had to start from seeds (chipmunks), but will do those next year too. 10 feet tall! Awesome.
Am going to try overwintering spinach this year. Tomatoes have just about finished. My sweet pea flowers are still going strong, that's been a pleasant surprise. And I just found a Cardinal Flower that I thought was gone growing in the mint. (It is scheduled to be moved to a sunny spot). The mint/Lily of the Valley border hasn't changed this year. Those two plants fight it out to a draw in the shade.
Do they mention the rich NYers have moved to their weekend homes where gardening is possible?
I maintain that invoke works in the context of gardening. But, then, I once made Mama, she who could grow anything, touch every bulb I'd just planted in a new border before I covered them. An invocation is appropriate for us enthusiastic amateurs.
Alas, I have just moved into an apartment and am mourning the loss of my plants, not that I've been able to do much gardening lately anyway. Opening boxes of gardening books which I'd packed away a decade ago has made me melancholy.
My grandfather could grow tomatoes on the damn concrete...same with my dad. I can barely grow weeds. Some people have the magic touch...
"First of all, I once worked for Smith & Hawkins..."
I bought a pair of their khakis once at an outlet store. Best pants I ever bought. Fit perfectly and lasted forever. Never got the chance to buy more before they folded (the company, not the pants).
Hahahaha. This reminds me of when Gov Whitmer made it illegal to buy things with which to garden.
Even a casual student of history knows that people in the past lived with a great deal more uncertainty in their lives than we do.
This is more boomer (or post-boomer) navel gazing. The great boomer fallacy is that the correct politics will reduce the uncertainty in our lives. They even believe that the correct politics can control the weather a century from now.
My Baltimore rowhouse had a rabbit hutch in its 15' x 15' back yard for years and years before we moved in. When my wife first tried gardening, she planted flowers in that yard, finding the soil easy to work, as it had the look and consistency of chocolate cake. The delphiniums topped out at 8 to 9 feet tall. It wasn't until she tried the stony front yard, still full of construction trash from the WW I era, that she realized what a gift that back yard was.
Gardening is all about the dirt.
Working in the yard is therapeutic. So gardening certainly can be "a solace to many."
Tomatoes and cukes are solid this year in Wisconsin. Beans not so much. Peppers are on the way. Basil keeps coming even after I ripped out most last year.
I do confess I first read the headline as "Garnering has been a solace to so many..."
"If the trolls were saying "The world is falling apart, and YOU'RE GARDENING?!?" back in May 2019, imagine what they're saying in 2020." I ain't goin' there, and YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.
I garden every year, store bought tomatoes are flavorless and I do not eat them.
Cukes this year did not perform but the squash is so bountiful I'm giving it away left and right.
The tomatoes are all for me and the family though, can't get enough.
Lighten up, Gah.
Who jumped first?
I've been gardening, but I have a garden every year. I work with software so it's nice to be able to do something that produces tangible results, even when all I end up with is a bucket of weeds for the compost pile.
Gardening is a source of hope. But is hope good or bad? Does it provide you with a reason for getting up each day or does it just make you do something futile again and again? My gardening hope is a lot like Wile. E. Coyote's hope at the beginning of every Road Runner cartoon. I start the year looking forward to my garden and then the deer come along and eat every damn thing, right through my netting and my fencing and my deer deterrents. Every year I have a plan and every year it fails. But for a few weeks I have hope every year.
Love the cartoon, BTW. The only thing I miss about The New Yorker.
Chast/the Patron Saint of Shpilkes.
CF: Thank you. I have 'lived that experience', you might say. But my lion was always lurking around some corner ready to pounce when least expected.
Gardening is a Chick hobby. Real Men are landscapers.
"This reminds me of when Gov Whitmer made it illegal to buy things with which to garden.”
Happened in Vermont too.
"The deer jumped the fence and chewed off the tops of the tomatoes. They did that last year for the first time,"
I was told by two sources, a "wildlife biologist" who apparently has a day job working with a company that does excavation and who took time off working with a rake to look at my garden, and Meade, that it’s not deer eating the tops of your tomatoes, it’s thirsty squirrels. The only successful tomatoes I have had this year are the cherry tomatoes, and the plum tomatoes, which the squirrels leave alone. Apparently they loove beefsteak tomatoes.
Next year I am going with what worked, zucchini, cupcake squash, butternut squash, pole beans, and cucumbers, and rely on my friends who have sunnier gardens which are, unlike mine, far enough away from the stands of cedar that they don’t have squirrel problems. I will try peas again even though they failed when they got overwatered. This is a good time for a second planting as the weather cools off, since they grow fast in cool weather, and maybe I can get more in September.
In January and February you can get tomatoes in Florida from the fruit stand, but even though they are vine ripened, in the past few years they have started planting some genetically engineered variety which is tough enough that you can probably ship them like coal, using a loader to dump them into coal cars to ship ‘em up north, and you won’t see any marks on them. So now if you want decent tomatoes in Florida, you have to grow your own too.
Look, you can't garden without your face diaper. Be safe out there!
“Next year I am going with what worked,...”
And there you have it — the essential heart and soul of a true gardener. Likely he needs no therapy but if he did, he’d probably turn to a professional... THERAPIST, not a house and garden project because that would be Crazy Bernie level c-r-a-z-y.
Gardening to me is trimming and weeding. Some kind of future? Yeah, sometime in the future I'm going to have to do it all over again.
"I've been gardening for decades, I have a Troy-bilt rototiller, but this year is my last for awhile. The deer jumped the fence and chewed off the tops of the tomatoes."
I have one word for you, Jim- venison.
Meade said...
“Next year I am going with what worked,...”
And there you have it — the essential heart and soul of a true gardener.
-----------------------
Not sure what a true gardener is. Like no true Scotsman? Anyway, the most passionate gardeners I know including yours truly are always pushing the boundaries of conventional wisdom. The thrill of seeing new shoots of a supposedly zone 8 plant coming back the next spring in your zone 7 garden can be exhilarating. To my soul, anyway.
From thecpist:
"If the trolls were saying "The world is falling apart, and YOU'RE GARDENING?!?" back in May 2019, imagine what they're saying in 2020."
"Your garden is too colonial."
"Plant some yuca."
"All your garden are belong to us!"
Howard said...
Gardening is a Chick hobby. Real Men are landscapers.
8/19/20, 10:49 AM
Sure. So how's your garden doing?
We did major re-landscaping last year in our backyard and added a covered patio. It has been a blessing and a refuge this year during the lockdown. But we're still losing the never-ending battle with the squirrels in our pecan tree, which have expanded their gnawing to our drip irrigation system and the electrical wiring in our vehicles and outdoor lighting. Any suggestions (preferably lethal) would be welcomed; I no longer care about the squirrels' future.
That’s a troll fail. I could charge for lessons.
@Meade, I pull weeds and trim dead buds from the rose bushes. Does that count?
PS: I always thought the Ames shovel was supposed to be the best?
I do what gardening I can, living in the city. I have a small garden in my backyard that I've slowly brought up to snuff and have planted various types of roses that some years do better than others.
About two years ago I planted a bougainvillea that has taken over and now covers the cinder block fence wall between my house and the one next door. It's an aggressive grower so I have to keep on top of it. I have clusters of pink Naked Ladies (Amaryllis Belladonna) that I've planted here and there for fun. The bulbs are the size of grapefruit and get impacted and need to be dug up, separated, and replanted every few years.
The tough part is that I lose at least four weeks every summer to heavy marine layer and fog. Just as things are kicking off the whole process stalls. Now that we've transitioned into August our summer is back with sunny warm days. We'll see.
@Althouse...
Aren't those Gnomes???
Sure, Trolls make it funnier, but...
The talent for successful small-time agriculture might be inherited. Its opposite seems to run in the family. My ancestors got out of gardening as soon as something else to do was invented. If I had to grow my own food I'd starve.
@Big Mike, Yes and yes.
Obviously, lots of "true" gardeners in these comments. And many ways to be a true gardener.
I thought the secret to veggie gardening with deer was to install tall fencing around square footage limited to less than a certain amount on a side. Makes it harder to leap in and out of. Of course, I learned this from a pal who so delighted in the wildlife on his new countryside property on which he planned to build in 4 years that he placed a salt lick exactly where he eventually put in a garden. Then he wondered why he had a critter problem. His first garden was too big so he had to subdivide with new fencing.
About as well as your manscaping, Nichevo.
Howard just gave us a "tell." Sounding fiercely heterosexual there, Howard.
While I don't have deer where I live now, we used to have a big gardens and lots of deer. We used electric fencing and one day a bear got caught in the kitchen garden near the house and was literally spinning in circles. Scared the crap out of my husband, who was working outside at the time. It finally just broke through the fence and ran into the woods.
@Meade, also affirmative on the Ames shovel?
Ames True Temper® — Made in America — Fuck Yeah!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah!
Can you evoke the future? I think the future has to be invoked.
The zinnias got eaten by critters. A groundhog is suspected, but squirrels or rabbits may be the true criminals. We caught a few squirrels but released them, as they will be needed as essential workers for acorn cleanup duty. Several chipmunks were dispatched, but they may have been eating the hornets that stung and gave me a large local reaction. No one mourns the departed mice. It’s been an onslaught.
"I think the future has to be invoked."
Maybe, but the uncertain, unpredictable prospect of the future is an emotion that can only be evoked.
Invokes?! Should be evokes. If The New Yorker is already getting stuff like that wrong, the future looks kind of dismal!
-------------============
I would say - given Media? NYT? predilection? for passive (no agency events) - this sort of provides more agency to the gardener who has to invoke optimism about future to get started on it.
Mrs. stevew is an enthusiastic gardener. At our now former home in MA she had a large flower and herb garden, and a large vegetable garden, The latter was surrounded by a split rail fence to keep out the big critters and on which I installed mesh to cover the lower third so as to keep out the small critters.
Here in our ME rental there are several flower boxes on the deck, a number of potted plants for herbs, and one good sized cherry tomato plant. Being away for the next few days to help my MIL finalize the clean out of her Cape house in anticipation of its sale, I am now in charge of watering the plants. Not a gardener I am so this feels like work - and I am a little vague about the quantity and frequency of this watering requirement.
Very stressful!
P.S. I am not a gardener, not nor never a grower of stuff. I cut and shape stuff, usually wood, occasionally shrubberies. And dig the holes that mrs. stevew needs for her growing of stuff.
I am gardening less. We have such a high volume of invasive weeds in the area, if I turn my back on the garden for a few days it is lost to the weeds. Oh I've tried mulch and I've tried weed block. The latter just produced weeds all flattened out under the weed block. Surrounded by large yards in our neighborhood that are not really managed. I have neighbors with front lawns that are all Doulas Fir covered in invasive ivy - about 50' of the trunks. Then the entire surface below - ivy. I estimate at least half the volume of stuff around me - weeds. I never had to weed this much in Seattle P-patch gardenes. Surrounded by smaller yards that are better managed.
My job takes more out of me the older I get: deadlines, deadlines and more crushing deadlines. I have decided that for now, gardening has too many dealines and schedules. I want hobbies I can forget about for a week - and nothing dies.
Doesn't it get old? The same tired New Yorker reruns over and over year after year? A never ending childhood.
I started gardening about six years ago. It was just a small patch in the side yard. We got so many tomatoes that the wife told me I could put beds in the front yard, where the light is best. She has to deal with people who have big garden ambitions but fail to follow through, so that was an enormous vote of confidence.
Now we grow a lot of stuff. Yeah, squirrels eat some, but not that much. Beetles are a bigger pest.
I noticed in April that seeds were selling much faster this year. Now, it's nearly impossible to find a box of lids for the canning jars. It's cheaper, on Amazon, to buy a box of new jars (which includes lids) than to just buy lids.
Foolish folks who break digging tools should purchase a Meadow Creature broadfork. They are not inexpensive but they will never break. The guy who makes them was asked if they should be carefully cleaned and oiled for storage. No, not really, he replied. Is it okay to dig out rocks with one? "Well, you're not supposed to, but people do...."
Howard said...
About as well as your manscaping, Nichevo.
Thanks, it's growing back in. I never should have let your girl play with the OneBlade.
But she made it up to me. You got 'em well trained, gyrene. Ever serve in Japan?
Flower gardening here. Tried various edibles. The squirrels were very appreciative...
Spent years one through 18 of our current home expanding the planting beds. Spent years 19 through today shrinking those beds. Just a foot or two here and there, but it adds up. (Now explain to me why I thought large rocks would be great edging.)
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