Your Farm is Beautiful

After all those months of snow and cold here in Valparaiso, and after a late short spring (you almost blinked and it was gone) it's good to have the family garden back. I'm especially enjoying the fresh vegetables. It's such a gift: to eat crisp lettuce again, cut just minutes ago from the garden bed, or to pop strawberry after ripe strawberry (that original earth-candy) into the expectant mouth and chew. Gardeners have a reputation for complaint and for seditious murmurings against misfortune, but the truth is that their investments of time and labor are in the end generally well-rewarded. Because even after the winter cold, the cabbage-worms, the wind and the hail, the digging mole and the nibbling rabbits--even after these have all had their say, usually the earth still finds a way to get its gifts through to us. Like a hand pushing sweet pulp through a sieve. 

Sometimes our rewards as gardeners arrive from unexpected sources and in currencies other than food. Such a thing happened to me just the other day. Our vegetable garden is bordered on the west by an alleyway, and about a week ago, as I was weeding one of our potato beds, a woman came along the alley, walking a small dog. She paused and looked over the picket fence: at the sweet peas climbing their graph-like trellises of twine and the young squash-vines just starting to crawl. At the tall wispy asparagus leaning in chorus in the breeze and the tomato plants vigorously climbing their cages. At the white-flowering buckwheat all abuzz with bees and little golden flies.

"Your farm is beautiful," she said.

Now to my ears, this was two compliments rolled into one. First, I was happy enough that she had called the scene "beautiful," and I told her so. Way too many people, I said, think that vegetable gardens have to be dowdy. We at Sunnyside think otherwise. And we strive to prove our point. 

Second, I was really touched that she had called our garden a "farm." "Your garden's beautiful," would have been a nice enough compliment. But to call it a farm! That was really extravagant praise. It was like tossing a bouquet of carnations for me to catch, even as she applauded.

Her point of course was not that our six hundred square feet of vegetable beds actually amounted to a farm. Or that we were actually making a living cultivating our garden. Her point was that to her it was obvious that our garden wasn't just a hobby or a pastime--a fun little extra--but a place and a pursuit approached with sustained commitment and affection. Something integral to our lives. Something like the real professional thing. 

I think that when it comes to encouragement, almost nothing beats a compliment from a stranger. Such compliments fire up the mind. They charge up the will. They confirm us in our principles. They remind us that what may feel like a solitary pursuit--in this case a low-carbon lifestyle--is often enough actually a public performance. The neighbors really do take note. They come and see. They pass by and admire. And sometimes, in certain happy moments, their appreciation comes full circle back to you.

I of course thanked the alley-walker for her compliments. I told her that it made me happy that other people could enjoy looking at our garden, even as we enjoyed eating what it provided for us. She told me to have a good day and then moved on, her terrier in the vanguard sniffing the gravel and jingling its tags.

Well. Time to get back to those weeds.

HB