Last summer my gardening attempts were pitiful. I planted a few vegetables in my square-foot garden beds, watered, weeded and in the end only harvested a few peppers and a squash or two. I got caught up in the busyness of life and gave up on it. I didn't even put up any vegetables.
That's a Southern term, I guess - "put up." It means to harvest a bounty from your garden (or buy a bounty from a produce company) and preserve it in your freezer or can it in jars to use later in the year. No self-respecting Southern woman goes through the summer without putting up at least two kinds of vegetables. When conversing in social settings, Southern women don't ask IF you've put up vegetables yet, they ask WHAT you've put up, HOW MUCH you've put up, and WHERE you got your vegetables. Its automatically assumed that you've actually done it.
And I didn't do it. So I had to dodge that conversation like the plague.
Them: "What kind of corn did you put up this year?"
Me: "Ooooh! Is that Texas caviar over there?"
Them: "Where did you get your peas to put up this summer?"
Me: "Did you hear that Betty Sue Jenkins has the gout again? Mmmm-hmmmm. Terrible, ain't it?"
Not only did I not put up any vegetables, I didn't make any jelly. Which is a big deal because I'm sort of like the Jelly Queen around here. No blackberry jelly, no muscadine jelly and, worst of all, no mayhaw jelly. I might as well change my title to the Mayor of Losertown.
This past weekend I ventured back out to my garden beds and started pulling up the blanket of dead weeds and pinestraw that had accumulated over the past several months. I had a tiny twinge of guilt for not taking better care of it. I mean, my Grandaddy was a farmer! I should know how to do these things successfully, right? Wrong.
But then I saw it ... three tiny sprouts of green onion pushing their way up through the soil. They had survived the summer, then the fall and finally through the worst part of winter and now they were ready to forgive me and give it another try, without any help (or neglect) from me!
Those little onions reminded me why I love to garden, even though I'm not very good at it. There's something so calming about sticking a seed in the ground, watering it a little, then sitting back and watching it do what it was designed to do. Mother Nature doing her thing.
And gardening makes it socially acceptable for grown-ups to play in the dirt. If someone drives up and catches me sitting criss-cross, applesauce on the ground with both arms buried elbow-deep in soil, as long as I have a little shovel and a few seed packets nearby, it's all good!
To be honest, gardening for me has nothing to do with how much produce I can produce. I mean, I enjoy bragging about my beefsteak tomatoes as much as the next gal, but I get just as much out of the planting process as the harvesting. It brings back sweet memories from when I was a little girl helping my Daddy plant peas and cucumbers and okra in the little pasture beside our house. There's something so zen-like about touching the earth, feeling the cool moistness and smelling that unmistakable dirt smell. It's so calming to perch on a short stool and examine each plant for new growth or bugs. And just being outside in the fresh air, listening to the wind and the birds and feeling the sunshine on your skin is so ... nice. It does more for my emotional well-being than a yoga class and an hour-long counseling session!
So I'm not going to beat myself up over my lack of success last summer. I got what I needed to get out of my garden, even though to some it might have looked like a total fail. After all, planting an unsuccessful garden is still better than not planting one at all.
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