A rainy day is aiding my procrastination. The back garden needs hoeing but it can't be done in muddy soil. Perhaps more accurately, it is that I don't want to do the hoeing in muddy soil. I suppose I'm a fair-weather gardener. However, the promise of those fresh fruits and vegetables neutralizes my complacency, motivating me to keep it up, to do the daily chores that promote a successful garden.
On average, I've eaten a half-pound of asparagus per day for the last four or five weeks straight. The asparagus patch in the garden has matured nicely, and a solid handful per day rises from the soil for my benefit, sometimes more. It is pure and sweet and tender and crisp. Unadulterated by chemicals of any kind with only natural compost to enrich the soil each fall, the asparagus tastes like the purity of nature. I put them in the pan, brushed with olive oil, sautéed for five minutes on medium to high heat, fresh ground sea salt and black pepper to finish them. Sometimes I add garlic and onion and home-made chili sauce, sometimes I eat them in an omelette. They taste heavenly on my palette, conveying their sweet, green, succulence, smelling like fresh dew on grass. I imagine the vitamins and minerals they have extracted from the earth, nourishing my blood and bones and muscle. The transfer of the energy from the sun's rays, photosynthesized into green matter, the plant's DNA determining it's cell structure, it's height and girth, the flowery spear-tip, is consumed and transferred to my own body, and I know that I am eating the sun and the earth and the moon together in each bite. It is a moment of union with the solar system, a cosmic feast, an infinite cycle where energy begets energy, life begets life.
I look into the asparagus patch and I see that some "ever-berrying" strawberry plants have survived the year or two of my neglect and have rooted amongst the emerald spears. The strawberry plants look healthy and robust, a few are tucked in along the lumber-constructed side wall of the nearby raised beds. The adjacent rhubarb leaves shade and obscure some of them, but their vines search out a new rooting in the sun, seeking to join with the strawberries already mingling with the asparagus. It is an accidental companion planting, this patch of garden: Horseradish root, rhubarb, asparagus, and now strawberries, all collaborating and competing for soil and space, a gentle yet wild equilibrium that might soon conflict, demanding my intervention. I will need to expand this patch, turn the sod and shake the rich soil free from the grassroots with my garden fork, mix in compost, and transplant the strawberries so that they can propagate freely, unhindered and unrestrained, becoming neighbours to the asparagus rather than invading colonizers. The evolutionary randomness of their inherently wild quest for survival has resulted nearly in orderliness, but the spin of the earth and the desperate reaching of their roots will soon embattle them, and then the hostility of the weeds will capitalize on the seemingly uninhabitable spaces in-between them, choking them, like sub-terranean Trojan horses, until they wither and retreat into dormancy.
It is an ancient routine, this deliberate propagation of species. Ever since humankind cultivated plants like the date-palm many millennia ago. The date it produced, a natural candy once dried in the sun, a gift of sugar from the tree, much like the gift of Mother's milk, invigorating and renewing the hope of survival within those early people, validating their efforts to settle and grow and prosper. And so my garden helps me settle and grow and prosper. It is a harvest of faith, of assurance, and of trust. The food rewards my body and balances my mind. I cultivate the plants but let the randomness inspire me, allowing the natural impulses of the plants to direct their destinies. I join them in their yearning to flourish, to put forth offspring, to carry forward their history in each future generation, their genetic knowledge gathered during their brief sojourn concocted into a seed of compressed truth, a vessel of experiential knowledge awaiting the opportunity to draw nourishment from the soil and water and air and sun, a repetitious dance informed by the past, shaped by the present, holding promise for the future.
It is an idiosyncratic routine within a great cosmic joke, the absurdity of our brief glimpse of consciousness, our feet reaching out into fertile soil prepared for us so that we might develop robust roots, the sun's warming rays synthesizing our hearts, the rain quenching our desperate thirst, the blowing winds and gentle breeze strengthening our growing stalks. We wither slightly but condition ourselves under the oppressive heat, rise up to meet the cooling rains, stand contentedly in the temperate air, flower in the spring's morning sun, bear fruit in autumnal grace, and disperse our seed with an acknowledgement that we are but a single plant in a vast garden.
On average, I've eaten a half-pound of asparagus per day for the last four or five weeks straight. The asparagus patch in the garden has matured nicely, and a solid handful per day rises from the soil for my benefit, sometimes more. It is pure and sweet and tender and crisp. Unadulterated by chemicals of any kind with only natural compost to enrich the soil each fall, the asparagus tastes like the purity of nature. I put them in the pan, brushed with olive oil, sautéed for five minutes on medium to high heat, fresh ground sea salt and black pepper to finish them. Sometimes I add garlic and onion and home-made chili sauce, sometimes I eat them in an omelette. They taste heavenly on my palette, conveying their sweet, green, succulence, smelling like fresh dew on grass. I imagine the vitamins and minerals they have extracted from the earth, nourishing my blood and bones and muscle. The transfer of the energy from the sun's rays, photosynthesized into green matter, the plant's DNA determining it's cell structure, it's height and girth, the flowery spear-tip, is consumed and transferred to my own body, and I know that I am eating the sun and the earth and the moon together in each bite. It is a moment of union with the solar system, a cosmic feast, an infinite cycle where energy begets energy, life begets life.
I look into the asparagus patch and I see that some "ever-berrying" strawberry plants have survived the year or two of my neglect and have rooted amongst the emerald spears. The strawberry plants look healthy and robust, a few are tucked in along the lumber-constructed side wall of the nearby raised beds. The adjacent rhubarb leaves shade and obscure some of them, but their vines search out a new rooting in the sun, seeking to join with the strawberries already mingling with the asparagus. It is an accidental companion planting, this patch of garden: Horseradish root, rhubarb, asparagus, and now strawberries, all collaborating and competing for soil and space, a gentle yet wild equilibrium that might soon conflict, demanding my intervention. I will need to expand this patch, turn the sod and shake the rich soil free from the grassroots with my garden fork, mix in compost, and transplant the strawberries so that they can propagate freely, unhindered and unrestrained, becoming neighbours to the asparagus rather than invading colonizers. The evolutionary randomness of their inherently wild quest for survival has resulted nearly in orderliness, but the spin of the earth and the desperate reaching of their roots will soon embattle them, and then the hostility of the weeds will capitalize on the seemingly uninhabitable spaces in-between them, choking them, like sub-terranean Trojan horses, until they wither and retreat into dormancy.
It is an ancient routine, this deliberate propagation of species. Ever since humankind cultivated plants like the date-palm many millennia ago. The date it produced, a natural candy once dried in the sun, a gift of sugar from the tree, much like the gift of Mother's milk, invigorating and renewing the hope of survival within those early people, validating their efforts to settle and grow and prosper. And so my garden helps me settle and grow and prosper. It is a harvest of faith, of assurance, and of trust. The food rewards my body and balances my mind. I cultivate the plants but let the randomness inspire me, allowing the natural impulses of the plants to direct their destinies. I join them in their yearning to flourish, to put forth offspring, to carry forward their history in each future generation, their genetic knowledge gathered during their brief sojourn concocted into a seed of compressed truth, a vessel of experiential knowledge awaiting the opportunity to draw nourishment from the soil and water and air and sun, a repetitious dance informed by the past, shaped by the present, holding promise for the future.
It is an idiosyncratic routine within a great cosmic joke, the absurdity of our brief glimpse of consciousness, our feet reaching out into fertile soil prepared for us so that we might develop robust roots, the sun's warming rays synthesizing our hearts, the rain quenching our desperate thirst, the blowing winds and gentle breeze strengthening our growing stalks. We wither slightly but condition ourselves under the oppressive heat, rise up to meet the cooling rains, stand contentedly in the temperate air, flower in the spring's morning sun, bear fruit in autumnal grace, and disperse our seed with an acknowledgement that we are but a single plant in a vast garden.
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