Summer Gardening 3

The grand experiment of growing a second garden went fifty percent bust with the loss of my beets to an animal that ate the tops of the few that had sprouted. My snow peas, though, remained green, promising a good crop. Meanwhile, sparkling waves of goldfinches visited the towering sunflowers. What a pleasure to see so many of the bright yellow birds feasting on the seeds!

My Sunflowers on July 11, 2016

The patch of earth where I grow vegetables occupied much of my spring and summer. You could say I was focused on the garden. Nearly every day found me bending to pull weeds so as to keep the area as productive as possible. In early August, the lack of rainfall prompted me to pump water from the spring-fed well every other day, to carry the buckets to the garden, and to pour them on the row of snow peas and the half rows of gladiolus corms, now in full flower from cool pink to hot pink. I started the corms late, and not all of them thrived.

I noticed that a few of the beans were blooming again. I wondered if I would get another bushel from the spectacularly productive plants.

A Cat Among the Squash on July 11, 2016

At a time when I would have been preparing to teach early American literature in the fall semester, I spent my days as a retiree appreciating the curling tendrils of snow peas and the joyous flutter of goldfinch wings. Life had come down to terms simpler than those to which I had become accustomed during the thirty-four years I had taught a grueling four-course load. While I loved teaching, I was finding that I loved the tranquility of the garden. Under the blazing sun, passages from the great works that I had taught flitted in and out of my memory like finches visiting sunflowers. For me, living in retirement was becoming more elemental: less the elaborate construction of creative minds. The garden presented philosophy in starkest conditions: cycles of life and death, as well as beauty arising from the human touch but taking its own forms without reference to the gardener.

I found the snow peas in the hot soil of the August garden symbolic of Thomas Aquinas. The vital spark sprouted the material plants from the seed peas and unfolded their leaves. Studying their growth inspired my intellectual responses. I was connected to the peas by having planted them, but I was disconnected from their life, which I had not created. I was both in the picture of my garden and out of it. The more I contemplated my vegetables, the less I felt the presence of ego. I did not vanish, for I was necessary to keep the garden weeded; but the “I” so often at the forefront of my waking activities counted for less and was quiet in the face of such a splendid nature that hardly needed me.

I looked forward to dining on fresh snow peas.