Be a Beginner

(My garden as a metaphor for life!)

Five years ago, I had never spent more than a couple of hours at a time helping in someone else’s garden. I’d been living in a Brooklyn apartment for twenty years, with no outdoor space. That first, awful, pandemic summer, my family was sheltering in Vermont, knowing we’d left “home” behind… with no idea what we were going toward.

If only I could have know that this is what was awaiting us:

How I wish I could go back and show the 2020 version of myself this picture, and tell her: this will be your home. Not only that; all the bounty you see growing here? Your hands, and the hands of those you love, will have been the ones to plant this idyll. I wouldn’t have believed it. I had no idea I could do something new.

When we moved into this house on the day before Halloween of 2020, it had a big, grassy front yard, and a big, grassy back yard. We’d come from a home with only a stoop to sit on out in the open air, so I knew one of the yards would be ample for the kids to run around in. The back yard got a geodesic dome, a swingset, a play house, and a mud kitchen. The front, which is south facing, got plants.

My daughter, who was three at the time, said her gardening goal was “to grow a tomato.” So that’s where we began.

Now, in amongst the plum trees, and a peach tree, and a redbud, and the elderberry bush, and the raspberries and strawberries and blueberries, there are Delphiniums…

…and Dianthus…

…and Shasta Daisies…

…and whatever this happy orange guy is called (can’t remember! anyone know?) …

…and this rose, which smells divine…

…and this coneflower…

…and dozens of other native plants—monarda, mountain mint, penstamon, coreopsis, butterfly weed, et al—and roses, and peonies, and irises, so many other things I can’t even remember them right now.

And here, on the vegetable side of things, is where I’m growing eggplant and kale and lettuce and sugar snap peas and four different kinds of tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and basil and dill and look at that little pole bean tendril reaching for the stars…

Yesterday’s harvest of bok choy, dill, basil, and one adorable fairytale eggplant:

And I haven’t even shown you the fairy garden we’re working on this summer, or how these “mushrooms” (thrifted bowls and vases, and solar lights from the dollar store) fit into our vision. I’ll save that for a future dispatch…

In the meantime, don’t be afraid to be a beginner!

xo,

M.