I am inspired this spring.
Tracy has been working tirelessly on reducing our spending at the grocery (you should e-mail him if you’re interesting in learning about what he’s doing. He’s cut our food spending by over sixty percent and we’re eating well) and reorganizing our kitchen for efficiency. We’ve loaded up the car with donations for this project as a way to streamline our own lives while extending a friendly hand to others, and it looks like the sun has come back to stay for a while.
Last year, my gardening wasn’t very successful and until very recently, I didn’t feel motivated to try it again. I began to seriously regret that we’d ever built the container, that we’d spent money on seeds and soil and lumber. I’d decided that even though I loved other people’s gardens, I just didn’t have what it takes to make one of my own flourish.
But Tracy saw it differently. He has a dream of growing and canning, of stockpiling, of opening up fresh vegetable soup on a cold winter’s day. He has a dream of luscious tomatoes piled high on a summer plate. We can do it, he assured me. We can learn from our mistakes. We can make it work this year.
When I close my eyes, I see it. Tall sunflowers, winding paths, cutting gardens, tomatoes ready to pluck from the vine, cabbage uneaten by insects. It’s a vision I’d love to see come to fruition, but I must also be honest about my desire to spend long days laboring in the hot sun—I don’t have one. I don’t like the hot sun. I like the cool spring sun but not the blazing one of summer.
I began to think that what I really wanted was a gardener, but that doesn’t so much fit in to the whole saving and streamlining thing.
This week, when the fog rolled out and the spring like beauty began to roll in (our favorite tulip magnolia of the neighborhood is blooming) I started to see the dream come into focus
again. I began to consider cleaning up the beds, maybe even trying my hand at container potatoes. I still felt cautious, but all things seem so much more possible when winter retreats.
So today, as the vernal equinox makes me think of this beautiful book and all of the celebrations of the new, of life, that are going on right now around the world, I think I’m ready to grow something.
This made me happier than anything I’ve seen in “the news” in a while. I hope it’s an indicator that this won’t happen.
Hello, Lori-Lyn! I am totally impressed by Tracy's ability to cut your grocery bill by so much! I've been thinking about the same thing -- not because we "need" to but because I am contemplating the ideas of justice and poverty and all of that and thinking how much more I could help...
And you try that garden again! I was always a flower gardener. Love it. Good at it. Easy for me. Then I went to veg and that is a totally different thing that is taking me many seasons to get a handle on. These are important skills that have been lost within about two generations. Scary! And I am just like Tracy -- dreaming of cans of our own food lined up in the pantry. Yum.
Posted by: Blisschick | March 21, 2009 at 09:38 AM
Randy loves to garden, and Lila is his biggest helper. She digs every day that she can.
There is a large Amish community where we live. We buy a lot of produce from them. I've heard that one farm has strawberries!
Posted by: Beth | March 21, 2009 at 09:40 PM