Gardening. Who knew?

Gah! Guys, everything is growing. EVERYTHING. ALL. OF. THE. THINGS!!!!

Seriously, I can't tell you how excited I am. For years I have thought gardening was lame. Super lame. Lame, lame, lame. Mainly because gardening in my head equated to pulling weeds. It always seemed like weeding interrupted my most delightful nights of sleep. Whether it was beautiful summer's day or a blissful Sunday in the spring, mom would walk into our rooms bright and early and ask us to help her for a “half hour” in the yard before it got too hot. I would sigh and roll out of bed and report for duty for what was NEVER a half hour and grumble inwardly at the injustice of not being able to sleep in on a Sunday when I had worked SO HARD at school during the week. Seriously, when I was parent I would let MY kids sleep in and not LIE to them about how long it would take. Life was so unfair.

And so it was that my hatred of “gardening” was born. As I pulled out weed after weed I would wish death upon them all finding a bit of joy in the piles of discarded remains that would grow up around me. When I got older my loathing grew considerably less but transformed into this idea that I had a black thumb. No doubt because I had spent my childhood bringing destruction to the plant kingdom.

Looking back, I KNOW that mom only made us get up and weed in the morning because it actually WAS cooler and she wanted to spare us the discomfort of the midday sun but in any case the damage had been done. Gardening was lame.

Fast forward to this last summer. I come home from Hawaii to find that Mom and Tobi, my Danish brother-in-law, have gone cray cray in the garden and there are heaps of delightful things falling onto the table every night. (And yes, I'm laughing right now because I just made you say “cray cray” four times. ) Suddenly gardening seemed a little more cool. Just add water and all of this produce just appears? I might be able to do that. Maybe. But Tobi seemed to be doing a lot of...stuff...that I couldn't get a handle on. Evidently gardening involved a lot of pacing, prodding, watching, and some sort of Danish magic. He had books, and talked about mulching and how somebody had walked on his beds and “compacted” the soil...and evidently that was a bad thing. “Ok,” I thought, dusting the dirt out from between my toes when he turned his back. “Stay out of the growing beds. Check.”

And then I signed on here. My job? Plant a garden. What? I know. Death hands. But I am nothing if not fiercely stubborn and I wasn't about to let the fact that I had only ever pulled things out of the ground stop me. I had been around gardeners my whole life. Some things were bound to have rubbed off. I hoped. Besides, gardening seemed to spin a lot of people's wheels. Why not give it a shot? It was high time I stopped judging and got my hands dirty.

And so I arrived and cultivated the soil. It was shit. No really. The top two feet was almost entirely sheep shit that had been aged to perfection underneath the wool shed. “If I can't grow something in this,” I thought as I turned shovel full after shovel full of brown gold under, “I clearly can't grow anything.” So I planted. And things grew. A lot. Even things I didn't plant. Like potatoes. Gosh, I have potatoes EVERYWHERE, but more on that later. I was elated. Seriously, stoked out of my mind. But I didn't feel like a real gardener yet because I had planted things that we had purchased from the store. I hadn't actually sewn seeds. So I sang a sweet song and sewed my seeds and sprinkled soil softly so they would surely sprout speedily. But to be honest, I didn't actually think they would grow. “They're too close together! They're too far apart! They're too deep! They're too shallow! They aren't getting enough sun. The wind is too windy. Did I water them enough? Did I water them too much? How will I know the difference between my plants and the weeds? What is going on down there??” I was a wreck. I mainly just tried not to get too emotionally involved in the outcome, but I knew I had failed when, a week and a half later, I began to see tiny green sprouts pushing through the top soil in perfectly straight rows. “ERMERGERSH!!” I squealed when I saw them, sitting there in all their glory. “PLANTS!!! I grew plants!! These are MY plants! Mine! I grew them!” I danced. I sang. I had an epiphany.

Growing up I had read the story of Peter Rabbit and had always thought that Mr. McGregor was the villain. Shooting poor Peter's tail off when all Peter wanted was a little snack. What a jerk. But as I looked down at my beautiful baby plants and imagined a rabbit sitting among them nibbling away I realized that Mr. McGregor was not the villain. Peter was. Just where did he get off, waltzing in and eating someone else's plants? If Peter wandered into my garden, I would shoot him dead. Yes. That's right. Dead. I would hang his little blue jacket up next to Sam's head so all the other little rabbits would know to stay the fox away. And then I would put him into a stew, and eat him, because rabbits are delicious, and I make a mean rabbit stew. Eat my plants will you? I'd like to see him try.

So anyway have decided that gardening is AWESOME. In fact, it's fucking magical. I'm sorry, but it IS. You bury these tiny things in the ground, cover them with dirt, add water and a week or two later, green bits burst forth carrying the promise of delicious foods to come? What is that?! Seriously people. Seeds? MAGIC.