The Story of Our Garden(ing)

Almost 10 years ago our neighbors (back in our old 'hood) gave us as a wedding gift a sweet card with a handwritten note: We will teach you to garden in the Spring.

They did. Well, to be honest, they taught Dearest Husband to garden because I wanted nothing to do with it. Even the thought of gardening made me itch. The most I wanted to do ever was nag Dearest to mow when the grass got too long, but even the thought of that made me itch. I used to have to pull weeds in the wheat field as punishment growing up and I really had my fill of any chlorophyll specimen. I didn't even like eating garden fresh veggies, preferring chemical disinfected store processed muck over what could potentially have a bug or snail slime residue on it.

Anyway, the three of them (Dearest and our neighbors) actually landscaped our tiny yards together to look like one big English cottage garden, complete with an Mexican stone fountain and winding brick walkways. Vegetables were put in with the flowers and nestled back by the porch was a Koi pond. We live near Meredith and August Home magazines headquarters and the garden has since been piecemeal featured by both of them, though it has changed a bit since we moved, the idea is the same.

One of the ways I talked Dearest into moving was the lure of more garden space (I wanted a bigger house and the lure/lust of a 3 story nightmare of a renovation project had hooked me). The house I had settled on had a bigger yard sure, but it had been a gravel/asphalt parking lot for when the house had been nine apartments. Beneath that layer was hard clay (and ants, lots of ants). It also had an empty lot diagonal and across the alley that we could potentially buy (we did) and lots of big trees.

8 years later most of the trees are gone. Our neighbor's spendthrift pruning of the branches hanging over her driveway killed the two Maples, lightening hit the Locust, and my husband fought the Walnut in a Don Quiote style battle and won. Not to disparage my love in anyway though. The tree vs. man battle also involved other male family members and really was a physical manifestation of the post winter stress we endured after spending 4 very cold and expensive months in a house with indoor snowdrifts and wild animals. That's another story though.

We've replanted trees and retained two Oaks, but it is a whole lot less shady now. We've removed a good deal of the debris and gravel and old concrete, etc. BUT our garden beds are raised for a reason. The clay and the gravel are formidable enemies of gardening. We also have lead in the soil, trace, but still there. We (as in Dearest with me watching sympathetically) dug down 12 inches and then built the frames, filled with imported clean dirt and compost, topped with heavy mulch. Even so, we don't do certain root vegetables and we wash thoroughly any harvest before munching. Sometimes that means bring a bucket of clean water out with us when grazing. :) We may live amid the fertile loam of Iowa, but our urban and river areas are not quite the soil of legend.

Oh, and how did I finally get involved in this messy, itchy pastime? Pumpkins. The poet/writer in me couldn't resist the faint murmurings of fairytales and I got talked into helping choose some pumpkin seeds; I picked a packet of smiling jack o' lantern pumpkins. Somehow the magic of those growing, glowing orange babies enchanted me into garden life. The ironic and unfortunate thing is that every year since we have had MASSIVE squash beetle infestations and we maybe get two stunted pumpkins out of our harvest before the little buggers decimate the vines into scorched piles of ashen vine. Does that stop me from trying?

Oh no, never. Perhaps it bugs Dearest that I got involved (re: bossy and domineering) in his hobby but picking up the spade and shovel has changed me in ways that are harder to describe. :)