Wisdom From the Vegetables

It's a humbling experience to bend over in your garden to pick a hard to reach tomato (because your brilliant staking idea was much better in theory) only to hear the "snap!" of an innocent pepper plant, taken out by your butt.  I only mention this because it's happened not once, not twice, but THREE times this year.  A younger and less confident self would have said, "Oh man, my butt is too big," but an older, wiser self with a better self image says, "Oh man, my garden is too small!"

I have had deep rooted garden envy since trying to make a go of it in our new climate.  A recent visit to some friends' Minneapolis gardens left me thinking I should just shut down the farm all together.  And then I remembered my first garden and how wonderful a failure it was.  Because of that failure (nothing survived except Thai peppers and one tomato plant) my neighbor offered to let me jointly garden his plot.  We worked really hard to prepare the soil, plant, weed, water, and watch our garden grow.  And it did.  And so did our friendship.  It was a blessing to share what we grew with friends, neighbors, and strangers alike.

Starting a garden from the ground up is a great metaphor for life; you have to start somewhere and it's usually messy, stinky (especially in the case of burying week old fish remains for fertilizer), and a lot of work.  You can research all you want about what should or shouldn't work, but until you dig in and sweat a little, you're not really going to find out.  And each year you have to reflect, evaluate, and make changes.  I have to gently remind myself of this when I'm surveying my new garden when I'm trying to build a new career, family, and life in our new home.

A few weeks ago was my first birth as a birth doula.  It was the fruit of months of learning, website building, reading, and networking.  Much like planting my kale seeds this spring in hopes for healthy greens, I signed up for training and bought books in hopes of someday supporting expectant mothers and their partners during labor (except my kale plants were brutally attacked by aphids and I had to chuck 'em).  Bad comparison maybe, but things were learned in both scenarios and adjustments will be made for the next client and next year's kale.

Earlier this summer in my new garden

After a long journey of frustration, heartbreak, and disappointment at growing our family, we're signed up for foster care classes.  Growing this "garden" has taken more patience than I think I have.  There are so many ways to have a family and everyone has opinions on how you should do it, or what you shouldn't do, or who you shouldn't adopt, or maybe you should just do this and that and maybe if you just relax and woah, it's really none of your business, people!  Bringing up issues of fertility, foster care, and adoption in conversation is like inviting anyone who has ever eaten a vegetable into your garden for advice on how to make your beets grow better.  Sometimes you must close the gate and sit in your failed spinach plot while the chickens cluck at you for more cherry tomato treats, please.

The mule from whom I fell off  later in the day

We're slowing building our new life; I have friends (even some non-relatives), my horsemanship skills are slowing growing (falling off the mule wasn't an issue, but getting kicked by a colt yesterday has me questioning my dedication), and we're feeling involved in the community.  Oh, and I scored, the first in my lifetime, a goal in our indoor soccer league!  Celebrate the small victories, I say, and forget that your opponent was a woman in her sixties.




I loved watching parts of my garden flourish its first year; its much more fruitful than expected.  Maybe it's time to give myself a little break and expect the same for the rest of my life; although it might look a little hail damaged in parts, fruit will grow and it will be delicious!

Wildflowers near the coop