I’ve downsized my garden this year, letting perhaps half slip back to grass and wildflowers.
On a recent soft twilight, out spading what is the sunniest end of the plot, I noted flat, dry, yellow and dirty-white husks of tomatoes and squash gone to waste either from my neglect or from my not being conscientious enough in sharing the bounty.
The garden, both middle and margin, floated ample archipelagos of weeds gone out of hand last summer. Digging them up, shaking dirt from their spidery roots, I promised myself not to let them get out of control this year.
The earth yielded to my efforts, forgiving me my trespasses, accepting my pledges of vigilance and care.
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A garden offers a thinking man more than fresh vegetables, though a tomato plucked yielding and juicy from an August vine is a prize for even the most foggy-headed rustic. A garden offers balance and self-discovery, allows a man to root himself among the plants he’s nurturing, liberates him from the mundane so he might know, as they do, the all-mother’s goodness and succor.
A garden, large or small, invites a man to know the earth, the wind, the rain and himself in a context free from life’s getting and spending, beckons him to join the great and enduring cycle of a year. He need invest only a little time, a little sweat and a little of his heart, too, to be showered with the graces of his garden.
