Gardening

I thought I’d try this thing where I work on one thing at a time, and stick with it until it’s finished, rather than writing a few paragraphs of one thing and then a few paragraphs of another and sometimes leaving something for so long that I forget what I was even thinking about when I started writing it and then having to discard it altogether. Because I hate when that happens. But I might never finish the other thing I’m writing now. I just read the page that I wrote and I find that I don’t care enough about it to try to finish it. That happens sometimes too. 

It’s the middle of May here in Maryland and unlike the last two Mays, it’s actually warm, though we have had a ton of rain. My neighborhood is a riot of growth. Even the houses with the lawns that tend to be perfectly manicured and the gardens that are generally well-tended are looking a little straggly right now. And my house looks very straggly. No one has had time to cut the grass for over a week and as for the garden? It’s a mess, and it’s likely to stay that way for a bit. I’m not a gardener. Sometimes I wish I was but I hate dirt too much to go around digging in it.  

I am a neat person, but I'm not a fanatic. I'm not a germaphobe. I do hate to touch anything sticky or slimy (especially the latter) but that's not why I hate dirt. Or soil, really. It's soil that I hate. Soil reminds me that I am alienated from nature. It reminds me that I'm a creature of modern life, totally dependent on technology and man-made infrastructure. It reminds me that if I were to be dropped into the wilderness with nothing but my own wits, I'd be a goner. 

So I hate dirt, and its smug little face sneering at me and laughing at my incompetence. I don't need to grow anything. If I need food I will buy it at the grocery store. If I need any flowers that don't already grow in my garden, I will go to a florist. Or I will look at my neighbors' lovely gardens. I don't need you, dirt. 

But still, I watch people who garden and I envy them a bit. I envy their beautiful gardens but even more than their gardens, I envy their competence. It must be nice to be so connected to the earth that you know exactly what to do to make things grow. Where do you dig the holes, I always think. Should you look for a sunny spot, or is shade better? I mean, I can look around and see where it’s sunny or shady, but am I supposed to know exactly where the sun will shine on each corner of my garden at any given time of day? I’ve lived here for 17 years, but I couldn’t tell you what corner of my property is sunny at 10 am or 4 pm. I’m not that observant. I don’t know when to water things, or how much, or if I even should water things. It rains quite a lot here, after all. Maybe that’s all the water the plants need. 

Of course, I know that all of this information is available for the asking. I can buy potted plants or seeds, and read the instructions. I can walk around the house and make notes on sunny and shady spots at various times of day. I can do a little bit of internet research to find out what kind of soil we have around here. But I probably won’t do any of that. If I’m going to work 40-plus hours a week, do three different volunteer jobs, keep a clean house, read books, grocery shop for my old lady (I own her now; I know this) and still have time to sit around writing about how little time I have, then there’s no time for gardening. 

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Pretty often, I think about something that happened in the past, and I look at my notes or my calendar or this blog, and I find that the thing that I’m remembering happened exactly one year or two years or five years in the past. The weather and the position of the sun relative to the earth and the smell of certain flowers or certain leaves about to shed and turn themselves into mulch, or a soft balminess (or an icy sharpness depending on the season) in the air all conspire to remind me. 

Hey, maybe I’m more connected to nature than I thought. 

It was just shy of one year ago that I wrote about walking around my neighborhood on the first summer-hot evening of the year, just as an enormous brood of 17-year cicadas emerged from its underground lair. Those cicadas took over our lives for about three or four weeks, and then they were gone, and I mean GONE, just as quickly as they came, leaving me wondering, did that even happen? Did I really just live the last few weeks of my life in a swirling cyclone of flying insects? Did I really just swim laps in a pool that was nothing more than a fucking cicada Viking funeral? 

This is apropos of nothing other than gratitude of the “at least” variety. This year is very different from last year; better in some ways and worse in others. Last year I didn’t have to worry about gas prices (and not only because I never drove anywhere) but this year, at least, I don’t have to worry about stepping on a cluster of dead or dying cicadas. And I don’t have to see them again for another 16 years. I’ll be old by then. 

So I started this by resolving to write only one thing at a time, and then I had a few other ideas that I really can’t work into this little post, so now I have even more drafts in progress than I had before. I’m not going to worry about that anymore.  And shall I tell you what else I’m not going to worry about anymore? Gardening. The inside of the house is neat and clean and I can’t bother myself about the state of the flower beds and the length and quality of the grass. And of course I still hate dirt.