On Gardening: A Meditation
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My husband and I moved into our house in the winter time, when I was 5 months pregnant with my first child. He was born on April Fool's Day, so there was no question that there would be no gardening for me that year, despite the fact that the backyard was nothing but a pile of weeds. I spent the following winter reading about plants and sketching garden possibilities and my mother offered cuttings from her huge suburban garden.
I was thrilled when the Victoria Day Weekend, (which is the traditional planting weekend here) finally rolled around and I could get started on my new garden. One of the first things I planted was a delicate bleeding heart and then watched in dismay as my 13 month old lowered his diaper-clad bum right onto it, breaking it clean off. I hollered to my husband to come and take the baby away, which he did, to his parent's cottage an hour north of the city, and thus began a fifteen year tradition of Mom's 24th of May bliss. My family would clear out on Friday afternoon and arrive home on Monday afternoon, after I had spent the entire weekend, dawn to late evening, working alone in my garden, or conferring with my neighbour Sue on what I should be doing.
All of this came back to me with huge force as I read a gorgeous new book entitled A New Leaf by Merilyn Simonds. It follows a year in her rather substantial garden, but despite the fact that my garden is more akin to a postage stamp, the garden work and the emotions it evokes are still the same for both of us. In those days I was perhaps a bit unusual, because Simonds points out that gardening is usually something that slightly older women are drawn to. I think that is largely because young women with small children are cognicent of the fact that the diaper-clad bum is always around, waiting to crush your efforts. Young mothers are busy women and there are so many things to attend to it is often difficult, if not impossible to carve out time alone to work in the garden. Because I was a stay at home mother, I could work outside while they napped and when they got older, they played in the grass while I worked the beds. But it was really the May 24th weekend that was special because I had the time for contemplation, which is perhaps where the attraction lies for older women.
Gardening offers two different kinds of experiences for the mind. A lot of it is hard physical labour, where you can block out your troubles and just get down to work. At the end of it your muscles are pleasantly sore and your mind is clear. But there is also a lot of small, close work that allows your mind to expand in any way you please. Music, literature, memories are all fodder for the gardener's mind. At the end of that, your muscles feel just fine, and your mind is full. Simonds writes "The forget-me-nots were for my mother: the blue of her eyes, the sweetness of her disposition, the way thoughts of her insinuate themselves, even now, into every hour of the day". I found that very moving, and this is a book where memory and contemplation are at their best.
I don't garden the same way I used to because we now live at the cottage for most of the summer, and my little postage stamp gets neglected. I do grow vegetables now, at the suggestion of my daughter, but I generally need a caretaker for when I am away. Simonds grows almost all of the food for her family, and the excess goes to her children, her friends and the local food bank. As her family gathers together for Thanksgiving, she realizes that she has provided everything on her table from the chickens she raised, slaughtered and cooked herself to all, to the vegetables, to the pumpkins in her dessert pies.
This is such a beautiful book, full of wisdom and knowledge and it (almost) made me forget about the cottage this year and stay home and plant.
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