The Furious Spinner

It is pouring down pissing down rain here. Cold and icy. Foggy. Can't see the snowy cliffs across the river. But I know they're there, hulking shadows beneath the fog. We haven't seen rain like this in a long time it seems. I'm not complaining. Rain returning to the Pacific Northwest seems reassuring—normal. Juncos look for seeds on the front porch. For some reason, the birds don't seem to like the bird feeder this year. I need to get out, deadhead the flowers, and generally clean up the beds in front of the house. Some flowers are still blooming. It's a mystery to us how and why they are still thriving.

We recently watched the movie My House in Umbria with Maggie Smith and Chris Cooper. In it, one of the characters talks about creating a garden. He says planting a garden is a sign that you have faith in the future. Or hope that there will be a future. This statement resonated with me, especially since I had planted a winter garden early in the fall and have not gone out much to see how (or if) it's thriving. I grew so despondent about so many things that I could not get myself to walk those few steps out to the garden.

I grew up in the country, and my father planted an organic garden every year. And I helped. I helped eat it, too. To this day I have not had tomatoes as good as we got from those gardens. On hot days, I would sit on the ground between the tall corn stalks running a toy truck around me in the coriander-colored dusty earth. Sometimes I'd pluck a tomato from its vine—warm from the sun—dust it off, and bite into it. Nothing in the world tasted better than those tomatoes. Except maybe the peas in the pod that rarely made it from the vine to the table. We'd sit on the ground in front of those pods and eat them all up.

When Mario and I lived in White Salmon, our neighbor let us use her back yard as a garden. Most of the time I was too sick and dizzy to actually stand in the garden and work in it, so I'd plop myself down and dig around from a sitting position. If I got too dizzy to sit, I would stretch myself out between the rows of whatever I had growing. That garden in White Salmon was the first one I had had since I was a girl, and watching those seeds I had planted sprout and turn into plants and then food was very healing for me.

After White Salmon we lived in a place where we couldn't have a garden, but I had nature all around me, so I didn't mind. Now we're in town again, and I plant a garden every spring or late winter. This year was not that much fun since they were remodeling the elementary school across the street, so there was lots of dust and noise, and then they began using pesticides. (But I've told you that sad story.)

After we saw the movie My House in Umbria, Mario found this wonderful article about gardens in Detroit. (You can use my ID—furious6—and password—spinner—if you can't get on without signing up.) About 1/3 of Detroit's lots are vacant and had been since the '67 riots; people have started planting gardens in these lots. One man has about ten acres of vegetable gardens throughout Detroit. I grew up an hour from Detroit. I remember the riots and how devastated the city was. I find it so reassuring that "satellite images show an urban core giving way to an urban prairie," and now people are utilizing these bits of Nature to grow food. From the apocalypse comes a garden.

I keep reading that article over and over again. I imagine gardens popping up all over the world, spreading optimism and nourishment. Wouldn't it be great to see an organic vegetable garden on the lawn of the White House? The produce could be used at a local soup kitchen, which is what some of the gardeners use their food for in Detroit.

I felt so optimistic this afternoon that I got on my boots, wrapped myself in every winter thing I own, and went out to my garden in the icy pouring down pissing down rain. The squash plants had completely disintegrated, revealing a few carrots I had missed—so I pulled them up to gnosh on later. The fava bean plants were about a foot tall, some mottled with a blight. The beets continued to grow, along with some greens: I couldn't remember what I had planted. They looked like kale. The strawberry leaves were golden. I don't remember that from last year. The two rosemary bushes were thriving—and too close together. I need to transplant the younger one. The lavender bush had pretty much died back, but a huge white spider with a face like a tiny human skull dangled between brown lavender sprigs on her own strange-looking web. Her face looked so much like a skull that I was startled–and a little creeped out. But I wished her well, assured the rosemary plant I would return, and took my carrots and returned indoors.

It was reassuring that the garden continued without me. It was also reassuring that I could see where I could do a few things to help the plants grow better. I have some work to do.

And dare I say it? Dare I hope? Have faith? Yes, I'll try: In the spring, I'll plant another garden somewhere and watch it grow. 0 comments

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