This piece was featured first on Mar 19 for One Good Thing, a weekly newsletter brought to you by Alexis Madrigal about his take on Bay Area art, culture & nature. Subscribe today.
What is it to plant a garden in the spring?
I’ve always loved the pomp and circumstance of it. I put on my overalls and my workboots, and I go to the nursery the minute that the tomatoes are available for my big pots. I imagine how it will be later that summer, playing the time-lapse in my mind of growth and flowering, fruit setting and ripening. It is a way to tap into the earth turning, the orbit we’re cutting through space, the spiral of life.
This year has been different, though. Our plum blossomed, but I didn’t take the time to sit underneath it as petals rained down. Our Japanese maple leafed out, but I didn’t run my hands across the soft new leaves, as I have often done in the past. Even the emergence of our flannel bush with its brilliant yellow blossoms that draw every big bumblebee from miles around did not shock me out of my complacency.
There are so many other things going on. So many other problems and opportunities. Maybe this would not be a good year for planting. This thought saddened me, but sometimes you have to accept the reality of a situation.
But then, this week, I had an event Tuesday night, which gave me Wednesday off. My wife and I had been planning a journey to Tomales, but then one of our kids spiked a fever (the flu!). We switched to a backup plan: just a quick trip up to Richmond for pupusas, and then a visit that city’s fantastic nursery Curious Flora (formerly Annie’s Annuals).
The weather, of course, has asserted itself. We sat inside Lety’s Kitchen, sweating, eating gorgeous pupusas with a perfect curtido. It felt like we had left the Bay entirely, maybe the country. When we got to the nursery, it was hotter than I can ever remember it being there. The plants were surviving just fine, but we were melting out there.
The intent of our trip was to acquire soil and compost, and a couple special flowers for the front yard. But as we stood there in that heat, looking at the herbs and tomatoes and cucumbers, the question resolved itself: we had to plant this year. Maybe we wouldn’t have time to tend these plants in the ways that we sometimes might. They might be left to their own devices for long stretches. Maybe not even every cherry tomato will be picked and enjoyed.
And yet… planting a garden—especially this annual spring planting—is not about perfection. It’s not really about outcomes at all. Sometimes the tomatoes thrive and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes there is too much zucchini and mint. Sometimes every weed grows and the special plant you desperately attend to dies.
But in these times of democratic backsliding, a war, an approaching energy shockwave, and whatever personal travails any of us is going through, planting a garden is a sign of hope. We’ll be here for this season. We’ll be here for this harvest. The point is not just the food, but the message to the world. And what more human experience is there than that?
Or to quote a recently published poem by the Navajo poet Chris Hoshnic (after Dickinson):
To make a crop, it takes the wind and corn,
A corn and the wind.
And a Prayer.
The Prayer alone will do,
If the wind is few.
Alexis Madrigal, Co-Host, Forum
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