Summer Gardening 6 (Last Installment in This Series)

The monsoon came. By “monsoon,” I mean only a week of showers. The hot, muggy weather, punctuated by frequent spells of rain, grew a carpet of tiny weeds over the bare soil of my garden. I pulled the tall weeds that had a head start and waited for a day dry enough to push my one-wheeled cultivator through the open ground.

For several weeks, the weeds and I did battle. Eventually, I surrendered, and a lush growth of crabgrass soon carpeted the ground. 

My Garden on September 27th with Crabgrass

And Brown Stalks of Sunflowers

Here is what I had thought I would write in my blog: Meanwhile, my snow peas enjoyed the wet earth. They curled their tendrils upward, flowered, and began to form the edible pods for which they are revered. I was amazed that peas, which I have always considered a cool-weather crop, could be harvested in August! Pods with their fresh snap adorned my salads! Unfortunately, I could not compose such sentences. My snow peas were a total flop. They remained stunted plants that set on nary a pea, as my grandmother might have said.

Was I disappointed? Why, yes! But I looked back on a summer of fun and contentment amounting to bliss: not a loss, no matter what!

My garden was essentially finished. It amazes me how quickly a garden adopts a bedraggled appearance after the plants have ceased to be productive. The shabby stalks of broken-down sunflowers and the browned leaves of what had been vibrantly green beans not a month ago were symbolic of the change of seasons and of all things that begin, only to end. Of course, nature also represents things that end, only to begin! Five months had elapsed since I had planted the first seed. I had worked happily during three seasons. Chuang Tsu quoted Confucius as saying, “Live so that you are at ease, in harmony with the world, and full of joy. Day and night, share the springtime with all things, thus creating the seasons in your own heart.”*

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*Chuang Tsu Inner Chapters: A New Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage, 1974).

Summer Gardening 5

For many years, my father led the adult class at the Methodist Church in my hometown of Pine Village, Indiana. Perhaps it was there that he honed his understanding of stewardship. As my father was far wiser than I can ever hope to be, it has taken me a long time to begin to comprehend the meaning that my father attached to the concept. The slender tendrils of my thought have grown from my gardening.

Void Where My Beets and Onions Had Grown

Stewardship means leaving things as good as, if not better than, they were when they were acquired. Obtained by earlier generations, such things are left to later generations. Fulfilling the obligation is what is meant by being a good steward.

In my garden, I use no manmade “cides”: herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides. By avoiding the temptation to apply manufactured chemicals, I hope to leave the soil in a healthy condition. I rotate the vegetables from one location within the garden to another, ensuring that legumes periodically return nitrogen to the earth.

Unbelievably Tall Sunflowers in My Garden

I remain aware of birds, butterflies, and bees. I plan a floral border that can sustain all three. Next year, I want to return to a mixture of zinnias, giant marigolds, and other medium-sized flowers, but, after watching flocks of finches appreciating this year’s sunflowers, I believe I should plant some of them, too. Maybe I can anchor the corners of the border with tall sunflowers but plant none in between.

Recycling is part of my effort to be a good steward, and I am always on the watch for broken glass or rusty nails that I can remove from the garden so that no one risks an injury while working or walking there.

My Sunflower Border in Full Bloom

Chuang Tsu said, “At the still-point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”* While standing in the middle of my garden and listening to the buzz of the cicadas in mid-August, I perceive that the boundary of my flowers is hardly a boundary at all and that the earth of which my garden is a small part spreads ever outward around the globe. Stewardship of my small portion of the planet is stewardship of the planet. Chuang Tsu commented, “To be constant is to be useful. To be useful is to realize one’s true nature. Realization of one’s true nature is happiness.”

Sunflowers Are Funflowers

If I were to say, “I am a gardener,” my statement would be closer to my true nature and to happiness than if I were to say, “I am a professor.” Even so, both expressions are true, and both link me to the experience of this time and place and to times and places farther off. Stewardship invites recognition of one’s location in the infinite. Stewardship is the ultimate global positioning system.

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*Chuang Tsu Inner Chapters: A New Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage, 1974).

Summer Gardening 4

Awaiting the arrival of snow peas for my dinner table, I had plenty of time to pull the occasional crabgrass from the largely open expanse of soil that had been my wonderful garden earlier in the year. The peas were an experiment to discover whether or not seeds planted in July could produce a harvest in August or September. I considered what I could do with the stalks of the sunflowers after birds had harvested their seeds, and I watched for more bush beans to appear.

More Produce Rolling In on July 11th of 2016

Meanwhile, I noted that walking on the dormant grass of the lawn, a tawny tan in August, sounded much like striding on the frosted grass of earliest spring: crunch, crunch, crunch with each step.

On a special day, I observed a large Zebra Swallowtail gracefully sailing among the flowers. Its silvery stripes imparted elegance to its form. Where I live, the Black Swallowtails are the most numerous; the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, the second most numerous. I seldom spot a Spicebush Swallowtail, but I may be mistaking them for Black Swallowtails. The Tigers are my immediate topic. They are energetic, as if they might be coffee lovers having imbibed a bit too much caffeine. They rapidly flit from blossom to blossom before darting way toward the tops of the trees. The Zebra Swallowtail was much more serene. Its smooth movements made the tranquility of the scene all the more noticeable. The Zebra was in harmony with its surroundings, and, as I was part of its environment, I was in tune with it. I watched and watched until it floated away.

Empty Spaces in My Garden After Removal of Carrots

I realized just how pleased I was to have tried a second season of gardening, even if circumstances had reduced my crop to only one vegetable: snow peas. In the extreme heat and humidity of summer, I was given time to keep my garden spot entirely free of weeds and to watch a Zebra Swallowtail hovering above the petals of sweet flowers.

The metamorphosis of the butterfly never fails to inspire my sense of awe. The same creature that is a larva during one phase of its existence becomes a pilot capable of exquisite flight in another chapter of its life. What would it be like if we were to reach a certain age when we would go to sleep for a time, after which we would awaken with wings to lift us lightly into the air? Perhaps our lifetimes are the preparation for that flight. My friend Mary, whose story served to initiate my blogging, often said she was earning her wings.

A Cat Among My Squash Plants

I stood near my garden and asked if the individual human life indeed extends beyond the grave, and, at that moment, a cicada alighted on my nose and chattered before dashing off. I laughed aloud! Walt Whitman’s lines rushed into my recollection: “Ya-honk [the wild gander] says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation … I listening close, / Find its purpose … .” Chee-chee-chee the cicada said like an invitation to me. I recalled a passage from Chuang Tsu: “A cicada and a young dove laugh at Peng, saying, ‘When we try hard we can reach the trees … .’”* Summer gardening welcomed me to experience far more than I would have thought possible.

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*Chuang Tsu Inner Chapters: A New Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage, 1974).