I planted a garden last month at the beginning of the pandemic. Swiss chard, carrots, radish, beets, squash, green beans and potatoes planted from seed. Every day I go outside with my notebook and look for progress. In the early days, my little patch was deluged with rain and deprived of sunshine, and I wondered if I would be the kind of gardener who cannot get seeds to germinate. That would be ironic, but perhaps not surprising. I come from the fertile Central Valley of California, I am a 4-H alum, and I loved playing outdoors. However, I do not think I ever learned to appreciate the hidden rewards in tedious, hard work.
My neighborhood in the San Joaquin Valley was built in a walnut orchard. These days builders raze whole groves of productive trees to develop new neighborhoods; back then they yanked only the trees necessary to squeeze in mid-sized tract homes. We had three fantastic walnut trees on our property. Walnut trees have smooth bark and strong limbs great for climbing. I could hoist myself to the top of the trunk by ladder, by helpful boost, or by sheer strength; and then climb up into the limbs. The trees had a glorious smell and not too many pests, as I recall, except when my best friend Lori and I left boxes of Triscuits in the tree and attracted ants. I do not recall ever seeing caterpillars on the branches like I always found in our liquid amber trees. Those liquid ambers were super easy to climb, and I always enjoyed greeting fuzzy little caterpillars on my way to the top. I would also encounter reptilian caterpillars (moths, probably). Those scared me, so I would go back to the walnut trees.
Lori lived across the street and she had a large walnut tree in her backyard that we often climbed together. We created a special “emergency exit” (a well-placed branch) for quick escape when we did not want the slow route backwards down the ladder. At dusk one night, as our summer day of play was ending and the Denhams were entertaining guests, I encouraged Lori’s younger sister Suzy to take the emergency exit. She swung out on the limb, dropped hard to the ground and broke her wrist. I played down my role in the drama that night, but I know for sure I was impatient and persuasive, not “encouraging.” Lori and I always trod dangerously close to the line (occasionally crossing) with her younger sisters. The Denhams eventually took out the tree to build their swimming pool. If you know me you know – this was a fair trade.
Walnuts grow inside heavy green skins. In the spring and summer these small green eggs appear throughout the branches. I liked to pick them early, desperately hoping to cut away the green skin to see the baby walnut inside. It is nearly impossible to cut through to the nut and every season I re-experienced my frustration. Eventually these skins started to rot and the walnuts plopped to the ground. My dad borrowed a tool to shake all the walnuts down at once. Millions of walnuts (75?), and leaves, and slimy black covers fell at the same time. My job was to pick the walnuts up off the ground and put them into my paper grocery bag. I hated this job so much. I ought to have treated this job more like an Easter egg hunt. After hours and hours picking up walnuts (probably 45 minutes), my mom would crack them open. She sat on the floor surrounded by newspapers and cookie sheets, cracking shells and extricating these ridged and wavy nuts nestled inside their shells. What a beautiful specimen! Mom roasted them and snuck them into baked goods or made sugared walnuts. I never liked nuts in my baked goods or sugared walnuts. An Easter egg hunt with no reward.
When I was ten years old, Mom and Dad decided to turn our weedy side yard into a vegetable garden. In hindsight I wonder how in the world they thought this sunbaked, weed-strewn, lightly used junkyard on the side of our house could ever produce anything edible. The previous owner of our house had covered this space with rocks and parked his boat there. My dad built a sieve to sift out all these rocks. He nailed a wire mesh screen onto a square of 2 x 4s, large enough for my mom and brother and I to sit around. My dad shoveled (and shoveled) dirt onto the sieve and we removed all the rocks. This was the hottest, dullest and most relentless job ever; and way worse than picking up walnuts. I was certain this chore, sifting rocks out of 100 square feet of dirt, would last the rest of my life. My dad diagrammed our new garden to scale on green graph paper. I loved that map. It featured a jig-jagging pathway and little circles drawn to represent carrots, radishes, zucchini and corn. That map was hope! The work would be worth it if I could just sit a little bit longer in the baking sun. And then there it was, even more beautiful than I imagined.
When my kids were young, we built a vegetable garden. I leaped into the initial work with gusto. After some time, amidst the chaos of raising three busy children and having the convenience of four supermarkets down the road selling abundant and inexpensive produce, I began to wonder what was the point of all that weeding and digging and watering and waiting. The reward felt elusive. The garden slipped back into its natural state.
Now we are living in a strange new world and I have all the time in the world. I hope this pandemic has taught me something about time. It passes quickly and it passes slowly. Some days I do not even know what day it is. Maybe time doesn’t pass any faster, or slower, than necessary. My seeds have germinated and now I am fretting about pests and wilting leaves in the scorching sun. I have a few more weeks to wait before I can harvest some food. Our markets are stocked again with produce. How will my journey end this time around? I hope I will appreciate results that do not come instantly and easily, and that my labor will feel more like playtime. Languid time spent outside, and I am feeling healthy and strong. That is my reward.