For the past few years, we have been members of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club Community Garden. For city dwellers like us who like to have tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes at least a few weeks every year, this garden has been a real treasure. After a year of attempting to grow produce on our back porch, only to find that our fourth-story location makes our deck more of a squirrel brunch buffet, with our potted plants their main meal before jumping to the adjacent tree and making a run for it without even tipping their servers, we were lucky enough to become community gardeners, and had the satisfaction of renting a little spot of land to make our zucchini dreams come true. We also had the joy of walking to and from that garden---just far enough away that it is exercise, but close enough to make it fun---and the delight in seeing what everyone else was planting, seeding, pruning, etc. We learned a lot by just looking at all the items in our neighbors' plots, but rarely saw those neighbors---we all traveled a bit like ghosts into the space, only catching glimpses of each other, relying almost entirely on the changes in the plants to remind us that, yes, other people tend this space, too.
This year, though, thanks in large part to the efforts of our enthusiastic manager/liaison at the neighborhood club, we started our season of gardening as a community---all in a room, talking to one another, trying to figure out how we could self-manage, self-fund, self-promote, etc. Several of us knew each other from other local venues, but had no clue that we had been gardening side-by-side in past summers. Many of us came in to the discussion, myself included, with concerns about space---keeping past space, getting more space, making use of sunny space and letting go of shady space. This made sense, as in the past, we had all been neighborly renters working our own individual plots, not really vested in the larger garden as a whole. As we talked, though, you could feel the mood among the group of us start to shift, as we laughed and brainstormed and collectively started to sense that, yes, this could be something bigger than any of our individual gardens could be on their own. People started volunteering to work in different areas---I volunteered to set-up communication for the gardeners, and the blog is a part of that effort---and the collective energy about the upcoming gardening season was higher than I think many of us could have imagined.
This past Saturday, for the first time in as long as we have been gardeners at the neighborhood club, there was a call out from the gardeners, to the gardeners to volunteer to come clean up the common space, divide up communal resources, etc. Almost everyone was there, kids were running around happily, things got done quickly, seeds were shared, plants were shared, two children's areas were designated and prepped, an herb garden for all began to be planted, the raspberry plants were tended, the water supply was reestablished from broken pipes---the list goes on and on. The bigger accomplishment, though, was that our community began to really solidify. People chatted. Laughed. Shared. Helped each other. Admired each other's work. Comforted each other about hardships. Learned each other's names. For a social gal like me, it was a piece of heaven.
Every year, I enjoy gardening more and more, and I notice that the individual tasks of tending a garden, even the arduous ones that leave me sore for days, are more satisfying. This year, for example, chopping up and ripping out the pervasive weed that spreads across our plot each year as strongly as the last was exhilarating. It didn't matter that, no matter how hard we worked, we kept finding more. Pulling it out felt great. I enjoyed prepping the soil---spreading the fresh dirt and fertilizer, raking it through, finding more weeds and plucking them out, raking through again...it had the kind of methodical rhythm that I love when I'm knitting, only with more full-body pay-off from the hard work. Planning the space, placing the pavers, planting the seeds, placing the plants---it was all good.
It wasn't just good for me, though---Mike loves the garden, too, which is a wonderful thing for both of us. Somewhere in our weed-eradication efforts this past weekend, even with the crowd of other gardeners around us and the kids running past us playing "bug spy," I looked over at him, working alongside me, and said, "This is good for us. It's good that we share this hobby, that we love it more every year and are learning more about it every year. It will be good for us as---" and before I could finish my sentence, he said, "---we grow old together." There it was. The beauty of this sweet little garden of ours amplified in that one statement, that one moment of the two of us acknowledging that our time spent together here and now was an investment in our future joy together. For old-marrieds like us, what could be better?
When I think about our future, I always imagine a house with a garden. When I imagine moving back to Northern Virginia, where we had our first fledgling garden together, I think of the garden we could have, with begonias and holly bushes and maybe even a magnolia tree in the yard for good measure, and heaps of warm weather vegetables to share with friends. When I fell in love with Arizona this fall, and began daydreaming of moving there, one of the first things I did upon returning home was look up "gardening in the desert." Since then, I have happily brainstormed what the growing season for tomatoes would be (harvesting in spring, not summer), how we could use rockscape and multicolored lantanas to brighten up our yard, what types of citrus trees would be best to have, etc.
No matter what I imagine, though, I long for a home with some land and some space for our gardening adventures. Up until this year, as much as I have enjoyed our garden plot, I have thought of it primarily as a substitute for having a yard. This year, though, I see it in a whole new way---as a community of gardening friends from whom we can learn, share, and enjoy the activity in a completely enhanced way. It is also a place for Mike and I, co-owners of this family hobby, to experiment with planting new things, to ask questions of experienced gardeners, and most importantly, to make friends with a common interest, all things that will make our time together in the garden richer and more enjoyable in the present and in the future. When our time in Hyde Park ends---and it will end, because Mike simply will not be in graduate school forever, unless the end of the world is sometime soon---I will miss this community, and the garden we are sharing.
Yesterday, we got a lot of seeds into the ground at our plot at the community garden, and added to the existing lettuce and other cruciferous veggie plants that we started a week ago. Today, EJ and I planted the beginnings of our porch herb garden---while I have long-since abandoned planting vegetables and fruit there, as long as we don't have any juicy produce to munch on, herbs seem to be ignored by the squirrels. Across both days, I felt as content as if I had opened my door to a giant yard of our own with gardens all around. Here in Hyde Park, we garden together, and that is a privilege.
The beginnings of something good---something very, very good
Parsley, sage, [a place for rosemary but none planted, yet], and thyme (plus basil, tarragon, chives, mint, and dill, for good measure)
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