I came home from vacation and discovered that one of my irises had bloomed. I wasn't sure what color they would be if and when they bloomed, and had been burning with curiosity for months. I nearly dropped my suitcase on my foot when I spotted it through the glass door--this opulent display that would make Georgia O'Keefe blush. Gorgeous. Brazen. Lascivious.
Why is this such a big deal? How can I explain what this flower, what my whole garden means to me? Well, it goes a little something like this:
Obviously, there are the usual benefits that come with gardening--
bright, fresh food at your doorstep,
like this beautiful bok choy that went in my potsticker soup tonight for dinner,
or seeing real beauty in simplicity
Dig the Fibonacci-esque baby cucumber tendrils here-
But I feel that there is a new, rather imperative benefit to gardening. There is this obnoxious unspoken pressure amongst people of my generation (especially the highly educated in Silicon Valley) to have done everything by the time you are thirty. I don't want to have done everything, seen everything, perfected everything. How boring. Gardening eliminates this smugness. It makes you simple and humble. It knocks the arrogance right out of you. Oh right, I'm not the center of the universe...I'm not even close. Gardening gives you a little perspective; it forces you to acknowledge plants who were growing and evolving long before you even existed. And to be truly successful, you must rely on those who are older, wiser, and who have done it before.
New geranium buds...
Gardening reminds us to talk to our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. It gives us something in common and thus rekindles the ancient art of conversation. There's no texting during gardening. There are no iphones. There are people, plants, and earth.
More radishes...
and look at this, Miz Liz Lemon has another bud!
Gardening encourages cross-generational conversation. I owe much of the success in my garden to talking with people (whom I may not have encountered otherwise). There's Jim, the elderly plant expert at my local OSH who gave me the lowdown on growing peas and beans, who told me, "Kid, bring in a stalk and I'll tell you if you've done it right." Yes, sir! There are my two colleagues who shower me with new plants and seeds--they make me braver than ever. There's my mom who shares her garden in her cooking each Sunday (she has inspired my use of herbs--they go in everything!). There's my neighbor who suffered a stroke last year and can't remember the names of the plants, but he remembers what to do with them--you should see the climbing jasmine and nasturtiums on his deck. Just this afternoon I reconnected with an old friend who put a container garden in the yard of her new place (she adopted one of my mint plants--I think mojitos will be on her).
This brings me back to the iris. I cannot rip myself away from it, nor similarly from this idea that gardening breeds generosity and a sense of belonging. Gardening encourages us to share, to give, and to be communal. This iris, this spectacular iris waited almost a year to bloom. My dear friend dug the bulbs up from his yard and gave them to me, after I said I was a little hesitant about growing non-edible plants. He simply said "stick these in a pot and they will grow." Slowly, but surely, they did.
And slowly but surely, I belong to something bigger than myself.
Which reminds me, I am sick and tired of being told that the country is going to hell (if the world is rotting, I can only fix what's in my own backyard). I am fed up with hearing vitriol and stupidity in our society (this is poisonous and we know it). I've had it with people in power persuading us to cut each other down. That is bullshit. We should not be cutting our neighbors down. We should be growing. We must continue to grow.
