Food from Nothing

Speak only if it improves upon the silence-Mahatma Gandhi

Inspired by Wife Mother Expletiving, I gave up writing the blog for the month of June.

I wanted to give writing on paper a try.
I cracked the spine of a 5-year-old journal, but I only got as far as writing one sentence, maybe 2. Perhaps, I thought, I need a break from writing altogether. I posted a few photos because I just could not resist, but I did not write.

I turned instead to the garden. The lush, overgrown patch of grass, mud and decrepit perennials that I have ignored for several years. I will let you , kind reader, fill in all the metaphorical blanks.

One day we ate outside and then we ate outside again and again. Then the kids set up a fun fair in the back yard and so it began, an almost daily ritual of being in the back yard. The back door stood open, the bees and the hornets ran riot. We ate and played and I spread manure around. I planted three tiny herb plants and a tomato plant. Their tiny green shoots went into salads and adorned plates. I had rescued a neighbourhood rhubarb plant last year and it got re-planted in one of the two empty beds.

I started to wake up in the morning picturing those tiny green fellows waist high in dark black soil. With each rainfall, I'd visualize the nutrients dripping drop by healthy dollop down into the veins of the plant.

I would feel tired after work and resist going out there, but then I would, and within minutes, I had that satisfying burn of physical labour that typing emails and blogging rarely produces.

I nurtured real live plants and not just pictures of them for a whole month. I spent time with my kids without thinking once about what it all means or excavating my experiences. I still took a lot of photographs, but being physical outside for a period each day renewed my devotion to nurturing living things.

There are so many metaphors I could use I suppose. But growing food in a once neglected back yard is the best one I've got.

Comments

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom. She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer). Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life. Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years. Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer. It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

Growing Versions

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