This evening, as I was mowing the lawn (something I don’t typically do) I thought fondly of my mislaid* friend Chad, who used to groan in agony with every new story about my home life. “Isn’t there anything that you guys have exclusive responsibility for??” he’d say (or something along those lines). He found it absolutely infuriating that Mike and I shared equally in all the things that we did. It occurs to me that Chad would be much happier with our arrangements these days, as Mike does all the mowing and all the gardening. I mean, whoops. Mike does the gardening.
Which is all the more odd, therefore, that I do the writing about it. But there you have it. It’s not that Mike’s an illiterate blob, either, in fact he’s exceedingly articulate, if somewhat under-gifted (as it were) in the spelling department. I did experience one of those weird gender-reversal mind shifts as Mike hollered at me, whilst preparing to stroll our three children off for Popsicles, “PLEASE don’t run over my squash!!! DON’T forget it’s there!!!” Shee-yaw, right, as if!
And all of the preceding is simply a round about way to let you know that since not much has changed from yesterday (except we’re down one squash plant. Kidding,) it seemed the perfect time to discuss one of our reasons for starting to garden.
See? I didn't mow the squash! Would I lie to you?
We really are gardening neophytes (which is a nice way of saying “ignorant nincompoops”) so why put ourselves through this misery? Especially when we’ve become members of not one, but two fabulous local CSAs (consecutively, not concurrently: Taproot and Heart and Soil).
Well, one reason is this: there is something almost wanton about our use of land in this part of the world. You need only watch a film like City of God, or Slumdog Millionaire to be reminded that having even a small backyard is such an incredible privilege. I don’t know how big our backyard is, but we could probably put up 100 of those slum lean-tos and it’s all ours. That is crazy! And the REALLY crazy thing is that there are so many people in this world who would pass out from the sheer joy of imaging the possibilities for FOOD from our huge…uh…lawn.
Just a small part of our yard: an embarrassment of riches.
Thus: stewardship. I know that sounds weird when we’re planting boxes and using (essentially) artificial soil, but the idea is there all the same. We want our children to know what the earth is really for - for growing things and sustaining itself. And that we are so incredibly lucky to be able to poke something into the earth and watch it grow into sustenance for us. It’s just like magic.
Just because she's so darn cute; and we're growing her, too.
*Okay, so he’s not really mislaid, I’m sure he knows where he is. He moved west, I moved east, we worked together is all.