{"id":1686,"date":"2011-03-18T07:49:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T12:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2011-05-15T19:13:14","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T23:13:14","slug":"garden-a-love-story-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1686","title":{"rendered":"Garden: A Love Story – Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Surgery Planted the Seed<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank goodness for my mother’s back surgery.\u00a0 No, not really.\u00a0 I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it was\u00a0her operation\u00a0that\u00a0first opened the door to\u00a0me, at age 15,\u00a0to the world of the garden.\u00a0 Though mom’s\u00a0surgery was\u00a0successful she had to take it easy for awhile.\u00a0 During her six\u00a0month recuperation I took on some of her tasks.\u00a0 I was glad to.\u00a0 I didn’t mind.\u00a0 I learned how to cook supper for a family.\u00a0 I learned how to make biscuits.\u00a0 And I was introduced to something that became a life love: the garden.<\/p>\n

I remember those heady first days and weeks.\u00a0 What started out being a small plot with a few tomato plants and some carrots, ended up being what felt to me like a vast garden kingdom, my own horticultural wonderland that included cantaloupes (grown on a trellis and supported by old nylons tied like slings), castor beans, and even peanuts as well as the usual things like peppers, beans, onions, lettuce, flowers, and much more.\u00a0 It was the beginning of my habit of spading under lawn (who needs all that grass?)\u00a0to\u00a0make more room for garden space.\u00a0 I spent hours poring over garden books, soaking in garden knowledge and lore and, of course, in the garden itself.<\/p>\n

Gardening helped me get through my teen years, a time of self-questioning and introspection which, at age 51, I’m pleased to say I’m finally through.<\/p>\n

Bad Career Choices<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, I don’t quite mean it that way.\u00a0 My career choices weren’t bad as a career goes, but they weren’t conducive to gardening.\u00a0\u00a0Newly graduated\u00a0from college I was a youth worker for two years, then\u00a0a\u00a0seminary student for four.\u00a0\u00a0Afterwards, I\u00a0served at two churches, each for about two and a half years.\u00a0 In those eleven years we always lived for one to three years at a time in apartments or houses that weren’t our own.\u00a0 Then we moved to Western Maryland for five years, three in our own cabin in the woods (lots of trees, lots of shade, little garden space).\u00a0 As if the gardenability of where we lived could get any worse, we\u00a0then\u00a0lived for\u00a0two\u00a0years each\u00a0in Bombay, Lisbon, Seoul and three in Jerusalem.\u00a0\u00a0In Bombay and Jersualem\u00a0we lived in apartments with no garden space and in Lisbon in\u00a0a house with virtually no garden area (except for some pretty perennials and a lemon tree, all there when I arrived.)\u00a0 I gardened as I could those long, nomadic years.\u00a0 For example, while living in a church-owned parsonage, \ufeff\ufeff\ufeff\ufeffI planted a small garden, complete with strawberries, in the backyard.\u00a0 I also asked members to share flower cuttings\u00a0which I turned into a large, attractive\u00a0perennial garden.\u00a0 I enjoyed it until we moved after less than three years there.<\/p>\n

It’s tough to garden\u00a0when you\u00a0move every few years.\u00a0 You can tend plants for a season or two, fun as far as it goes,\u00a0but part of the point and joy of a garden is building soil, planting perennials, and developing a year-after-year garden, something to enjoy and be proud of for years.<\/p>\n

Gardening in the Fan<\/span><\/p>\n

My\u00a0two years\u00a0in Seoul were a little different, garden-wise.\u00a0 We lived in a house with a yard (we had to keep it mowed, a joy for me!….the smell of freshly mowed grass…Ahhh!).\u00a0 Around the house were many empty flower beds waiting for me to start planting.\u00a0 Ever since that very memorable, fun and satisfying\u00a0gardening experience in Seoul, I’ve wanted to write a garden journal.\u00a0 The book I imagined would not simply be about the mechanics of\u00a0seeds and plants, watering and composting, and\u00a0the many details of tending growing things, though\u00a0it would include some of that to be sure.\u00a0 What I\u00a0was (and still am)\u00a0really interested in is gardening’s context, the bigger world that surrounds the vegetable plot, the feelings and responses of the gardener, her family and neighbors.\u00a0 I got that idea in Seoul, gardening within range of North Korean artillery (as all of Seoul is).\u00a0 I was going to call the book, Gardening in the Fan, referring to the artillery fan (range) in which I gardened.\u00a0 I was going to juxtapose relevant current events that were happening at that time with what I was doing in the garden.<\/p>\n

In that unique context I planted more than just\u00a0one-season plants like\u00a0tomatoes, basil, and lettuce.\u00a0 I also planted bulbs, azaleas, perennials, and even a rock garden, something I hoped would last for\u00a0many years.\u00a0 Setting the garden, both short and long term plants, within the context of that regional conflict was a powerful image.\u00a0 Who could\u00a0be planting plants at a time like this in\u00a0such a setting?\u00a0 But that’s just the point and joy of it!\u00a0 Gardening is a powerful act of faith in life’s ultimate, inexorable victory, and in defiance of an uncertain, often hostile-seeming world.\u00a0 The book’s punchline, at least one of them, would be that every gardener gardens between these two extremes, a participant in the mystery of new life and in a context filled with unique threats, worries,\u00a0and uncertainties.<\/p>\n

The Ruler of the Many Gardens I Survey<\/span><\/p>\n

Through a series of fortunate accidents I promise I didn’t engineer, I now garden three different plots\ufeff,\u00a0two \ufeff(one\u00a0I named Smith and the other, Jones) in local community gardens and one, the Lorelei, outside the door of our ground-floor apartment.\u00a0\u00a0We will most likely not settle here but move to a new and likely far-away\u00a0place\u00a0next year (hopefully\u00a0not until spring\u00a0crops here are finished).\u00a0 I guess that’s part of the uncertain context that makes\u00a0my gardening so precious and satisfying.\u00a0 My\u00a0garden experiences in Smith, Jones, and The Lorelei form the basis of\u00a0Garden: A Love Story<\/em>, that journal I first imagined after gardening in Seoul.\u00a0\u00a0Planted between these entries are reminiscences, snapshots and vignettes from\u00a0the gardens of my life, from those first experiments (all gardening is an experiment) when I was fifteen to the many garden loves of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Surgery Planted the Seed Thank goodness for my mother’s back surgery.\u00a0 No, not really.\u00a0 I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it was\u00a0her operation\u00a0that\u00a0first opened the door to\u00a0me, at age 15,\u00a0to the world of the garden.\u00a0 Though mom’s\u00a0surgery was\u00a0successful … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63,69],"tags":[70,71,175,58,176,177],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2009,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/2009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}