Okay, I’ll admit something embarrassing:
I had to replant almost my entire garden yesterday. I doubt that I’ll get anything from it because it’s so late in the season, but at least I’m trying. Nick and I had restarted some little pots with seeds in the house. The only thing that still grew in my raised bed when I sat down were two potato plants that Nick had put in. He came outside to check what I was doing. He was jubilant. Me? Not so much.
Cut worms had come through and mowed down a few of my starts, tomatoes and squash. I’d looked it up. Four plants had just been cut and not eaten. My Brussels sprout starts were tall, but I think the wet spring got to them. First, they laid down, then they shriveled and were gone. I’d planted a second set of seeds. About a week ago, I found two rows of little holes where someone had dug them all up. Squirrels. Or rats. My zucchini didn’t come up at all. The perfectly rounded hill I had built for them stood naked.
Mike finished mowing the last stripe of our pathetic grass and let the lawn mower fall silent. “Your sterilization box is amazingly sterile!” he said. Then, he waved at the green that surrounded it.
“There’s still a potato plant in there. See?”
He leaned over and squinted. A half dozen small leaves hovered in one corner at ground level.
“Didn’t Nick plant that?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“And his potato starts in pots here are growing great.”
I saw where he was going with it. He almost smiled, but held it in.
“And on the deck, my green beans and Swiss chard and parsley and sage and rosemary and kale in my pots are all totally gone, eaten.”
“You have green sticks growing in the pot that says green beans. They could grow more leaves.” He was starting to sound hopeful. I hated when he switched to hopeful. It was a sign that I was totally pathetic, too pathetic to tease.
Then, Nick walked outside.
“Dad, look at my potato plants!” he shouted.
And I listened as they talked about how the Irish lived almost entirely on potatoes as I stared at the empty places in my raised bed. I’d seen blight kill my tomato plants in years before I gave up trying. I knew I couldn’t even reuse the dirt that they’d died in. Maybe I had blight under my skin. If I so much as touched those plants, I could imagine the gray necrotic areas where blight would take them down.
“My family immigrated to the United States after the potato famine,” I said.
“Mine too,” Mike said and he looked at Nick then back at me.
“Mom, don’t touch my potatoes.”
“What if I see a cut worm or a slug eating them?”
And he rolled his eyes as if anything like that would ever touch his green, growing plants.
Maybe they wouldn’t. My grandparents could grow almost anything. I remember the year they tried peanuts. They lived too far north for peanuts and kept wondering aloud if they’d get any peanuts. Oh, they got plenty of peanuts. Everything else in their yard produced food.
That food was so delicious. I remember Grandpa tapping a watermelon and grinning as it split open to show the juicy red flesh inside. He pulled out his pocket knife and we ate that watermelon on the spot. There were onions so sweet you could eat them like an apple. There was corn, beans, pumpkins, beefsteak tomatoes, red potatoes, squash, raspberries, gooseberries, dewberries, apples, and persimmons.
My mother, brother, and sister are all gifted gardeners too. Gifted.
Not me.
Maybe it skips a generation. Maybe Nick would have that special something that allowed him to know and understand the plants as well as grow them. Not me.
Oh, I know the names of plants. I can even tell you about pests. I can identify exotic weeds growing in my yard and the best way to eradicate them. Here’s a hint: it’s usually pulling them up with as much root clump as you can. With blackberry, it’s easiest to cut them about a foot tall, wait three weeks for the root to weaken, then pull them up after a day of rain. Yet our yard is full of exotic weeds and few plants I’ve bought and planted have thrived. They either overgrow the space or whither away. See, I know how to do the gardening. I’m just not good at doing the gardening.
I sat on the edge of my sterilization box and pulled buttercup from around the edges. I’d lost track of Nick and Mike’s conversation. There, under the lip of my box, was a banana slug. She had a single dot on the back of her head and a bunch of freckles lower down. (Is that the top her head? I don’t know.) I found a big leaf nearby, grabbed her with it, and wrapped her in the leaf like a burrito. Then, I flung her up the hill as far as I could where I hoped she’d eat a bunch of weeds. I don’t kill banana slugs. They’re a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Plus, they’re native and my house if surrounded by forest..
I pulled up a few more weeds at the edge of the nearly empty raised bed. I grew buttercup, morning glory, and stinky Robert. Mike got Nick digging the trench for a French drain he was installing. The two of them murmured as I made my way around the box pulling weeds. Another banana slug. This one had the same dot above and plethora of dots below.
I’ve seen banana slugs with no dots. I’ve seen them freckled almost to a solid black. I’ve never seen two banana slugs with one dot on the back of their heads and a bunch further down their bodies. I wondered if they were sisters. I wrapped her up and threw her up with her sister. The Dot family that lived up the hill.
Then, I started working on clearing weeds from the retaining wall. Here in the Pacific Northwest, things grow so violently that they can obliterate the view of a retaining wall in one season. There, under the bangs of English ivy, was another slug just like the other two. Dot.
She too, could fly.
I wandered around the yard, looking on the shaded sidewalk. Dot. I looked on the back deck where the hummingbird feeder dripped. Dot. I looked under a pot or two. Dot. Dot.
I was growing a garden to feed the Dot family.
So, I had to fight cut worms, rodents, blight, and banana slugs.
Maybe Nick could grow us some food.
Thank you for listening, jules