A Blessing in Disguise

This year, for the first time ever, I planted a garden. To date, I’ve nursed a few houseplants, but never really considered myself much of a green thumb. Like cooking, gardening is not something my mom really taught me how to do (sorry Motorcycle Mama… but you’ve said so yourself). I was once charged with weeding her garden while she and my dad were on a bike trip, and I proceeded to “weed” her flowers and a few veggies too… I didn’t get that job the next year. That being said, I have turned into a capable cook, so I figured I should be able to become a competent gardener (with the occasional advice from my mother). That is, until I decided to plant my first ever garden, on a newly broken plot, during one of the coldest spring and early summer’s in living memory.

The location of my garden is where Errol’s grandma (who lived in a now demolished house near where our house, from the other grandma, stands). She favoured potatoes. Her garden, I’m told, was huge and produced enough potatoes to feed the WHOLE family through the winter, including lefse at Christmas time. My hope was to refresh the soil’s memory, and capture some of its past growing prowess. I opted to go small, since this is my first garden, and I am going to have a big belly to contend with come harvest time. I planted rows of corn, beets, radish, lettuce, cucumbers, carrots and peas and dreamed of eating fresh veggies well into the fall. I diligently weeded my garden, to help the new plants grow, and watered when I could. And then the weather turned and threatened to freeze my burgeoning garden. On June 6th, when the radio said it was going to be -3C overnight, Errol and I quickly covered the tiny seeds and plants with more dirt, and hoped for the best.

Short of 6 corn plants that poked through a week or so later, and nothing else grew. I felt like I had failed as a gardener, and cringed every time I saw someone else’s, far lusher garden. I even cried once for my garden (though I’m pretty sure that it was just the pregnancy hormones crying) and allowed myself to briefly think that if I couldn’t grow a garden, how will I ever raise a child?

I have since decided that I am not completely incompetent, and though there will be struggles, I will be a good mother. I have managed to coax 18 starter tomato plants and 3 starter cucumber plants into producing fruit. Of the 2 rows of carrots I planted, 6 plants FINALLY poked through. 1 cucumber seed eventually sprouted and is growing nicely, and I might have 1 beet plant growing. Those 6 corn plants survived the frost and a horse running through my garden, and I swear have doubled in size in the last 2 days. Hooray! I re-seeded my peas, and they are beginning to grow, but my re-seeded lettuce still hasn’t poked through. I might just give up on it…

I'm not as discouraged anymore, and am already looking forward doing better on my sophomore garden. Based on the size of my belly now, and what I can expect to be in September, it’s a good thing my garden didn’t turn out as I had originally expected. Now we’ll only have tomatoes, cukes and hopefully a few peppers to do eat and can.