IT’S AN EMOTIONAL PROCESS

The blast furnace temperatures went away for a couple days so I made the best of my gardening time while I could.  On those hot hot days I stood at my laundry room window and tortured myself with what a tangled, neglected mess my garden had become.  The lettuce was two feet high and about to flower.  The Swiss chard had collapsed under its own weight.  The peas, in their effort to climb above the jungle, had pulled the dill down. 

The beans looked lush and green from the house, but I knew under all those leaves lurked at least one large tub of over ripe beans.  They had gotten away on me … well, it all had … just like every other year.  Whether the reasons be holidays or company or weather or over production, by the middle of August it always comes to this.  It was time to start wrapping up the season.

So dressed in what seemed like winter clothes after the past week (knee length shorts and a T-shirt) I tossed back the last of my breakfast coffee, picked up my big, black garden tub, and commenced a bit of a purge.

It struck me, as I plucked bean plants from Mother Nature’s bosom, that gardening presented the same series of emotions year after year.

In the cold, dark days of January I long for anything green and growing.  I leaf through seed and nursery catalogues and dream of warm sunshine and moist earth.  By the end of February I can stand it no longer – I haul dirt in, set up shelving in the south window and plant seeds.  March and April are spent trying to keep the seedlings from dying because I planted them way too early.

At last May arrives, the earth warms; it’s time for the real thing.  To place those tiny seeds in moist soil is an exercise in anticipation.  How long will it take them to germinate?  What pests will I have to guard against?  Which will deliver their goods first – radishes? Or lettuce?  The ritual morning garden check begins.

There is joy when the rows start showing up; first tiny green specks, then discernible rows, and finally clear lines of lush sturdy plants, easily spotted from the laundry room window.

Toward the end of June satisfaction kicks in.  We are eating salads, and baby carrots, spinach and beet leaves.  The peas and beans are in bloom.  Butter sales are about to sky rocket.  All is good with the world.

And then July hits.  Well, actually, it’s a blur.  A person cannot keep up with Mother Nature’s production schedule.  Some years I last longer than others but Mother Nature always wins.  It’s exasperating.

Now, here we are in the middle of August, and the most prevalent emotion is one of relief.  Okay, I’ll be honest – it is with pure glee that I am ripping whole rows of legumes from the ground.  The mad rush is behind me.  Oh sure, I still have cucumbers coming at me and the corn is nearly ready and the potatoes will need to be dug, but the scales have tipped toward fall, my favourite season.  There is a feeling of completion in the air and the sky is the special soft blue it turns in autumn.  It doesn’t get better than this

A frost in September will finish everything else off.  In October I will put all my deck planters away.  In November it will snow. 

And somewhere in the middle of all the Christmas mail the seed catalogues will arrive, and we’ll start all this craziness all over again.