So this is it? The season without a garden? No plump juicy tomatoes. No bright green and red chilies hanging like Christmas lights? No crisp cucumbers that separate ever so gently from the stem at a lightest pull? No large, green, leafy Swiss Chard with their bright red stems and leaves shaped like a monsters hand? No Carnival Mix bell peppers – playing the guessing game: will this one we purple? Or red? Or orange?
Why, you ask? For starters, a car accident in spring which thankfully spared by life and my bones (but not my car) left me with soft tissue damage and intermittent and sometimes severe pain in my neck, right shoulder and hand. My only son’s wedding in late May which involved months of planning, a trip to India etc. etc. but thanks to all went off without any glitches.
Back to life after that: clearing the house, catching up on chores. Post-accident, talking to insurance agents, damage assessors, adjusters and who knows who else. Yes, the car was totaled. Because of that, arranging for rental cars, discussions about who pays. Finally a car settlement, and voila! Finally a car again! No time for a garden indeed.
Through all of this, umpteen doctor appointments, medical tests and therapies. New experiences of CT scans of head and of lungs. Other experiences of concussions and cold sweats, and nasty reactions to medicines. And sharp and persistent pain in my neck, shoulder and right arm.
Perhaps it’s just as well, I say when I finally am able to take a stroll to my garden patch. The long stretch of black plastic looks so forlorn, with a few random weeds poking through. Suddenly at the far end of the row, there it is – I start in astonishment – a volunteer tomato plant poking through in the little square, looking quite at home as if I had planted it!
Does one need any more incentive? Surely this is the goal I need, to get over the fatigue and pain. I have a few tomato seedlings (started before the accident). No ripping out the plastic and rototilling this time. I just make a hole just where I had made it last year. Fill it with manure and plonk one seedling in. The cages are close by to put around each one. Soon I have one row of tomato seedlings.
The raised bed has been cleared and accommodates a set of three sweet peppers, carnival mix, also started earlier. Soon they are joined by store-bought Banana Peppers and basil.
And the flower garden? It’s a sea of white daisies. Through them, the first blush of roses in early June – crystal fairy, honey perfume, gold medal and Queen Elizabeth, just burst out as if they just want to join the symphony. Not to speak of the roses in the new rose bed, the names of which I do not even remember. A delphinium, blue allium and blue fescue in the front garden – adding a touch of blue I have tried for years to achieve. The lavender is flowering! The stella d’ ores, flushed with yellow radiance burst out like a bouquet of flowers.
Its only early June, there is plenty of time to plant a garden. Sure enough as June ebbs away, the pain subsides, the fatigue reduces. As I stroll through the garden now, the daisies are spent – I need to get help to pull them all out. And yes, its Japanese beetle time – especially for the apple and the Buckeye. Yes, there appears to be fire blight on the pear tree.
Will there be a harvest this fall? Stay tuned. One thing is for sure – you can take me out of the garden but you cannot take the garden out of me…..
Gardeners all share three things in common; patience, imagination and hope. Almost everything you plant does not give you immediate reward – one has to wait. For me, I realize that when I do plant, I am not planting a tomato or a pepper or even a rose. I am planting hope. And who can live without that? I don’t have my life back yet, but I do have hope that one day very soon, I will…. Happy Gardening.