We are entering the fullness of summer. In past decades, centuries, summer was the time of abundance and fruitful work that, in many ways, sustained the rest of the year. Little House in the Big Woods (a recent and worthy literary foray) describes the bustle of this time, when Pa and friends would work the fields from dawn until dusk, while Ma and the children would be busy at home, putting away the fruits of the earth.
As a first-year vegetable gardener, I am newly, wonderfully being initiated into the rhythm that naturally governs this part of the world. With the enthusiasm of a novice, I prepared the ground and sowed seeds, all the while unsure that anything would be produced. Late May and early June caught my excitement; the seeds had begun to sprout and take root, forming small plants. The garden mothered by my roommate Wendy was beginning to produce lettuce and herbs.
Then I went away for a week. While I was gone, to the relief of my dog-fearing roommates, there was abundant rain and some sun. As I groggily looked out the kitchen window the morning following my return, I was thrilled to see a full-fledged garden: thriving herbs, happy tomatoes, abundant lettuce and chard. Evidence the Ziploc bag full of homegrown lettuce in the fridge and Wendy’s continual encouragement to give away lettuce and herbs to any visitors.
The full shock of summer came when I, several days later, made it over to my own garden-child, at the loft around the corner. The entire yard was grown up; there were weeds three feet high which had only been 6 inches when I left. A volunteer pumpkin plant had slashed its way another 4 feet through the tall brush (see Dana weeding around it in the photo). The dogs, as ever running happily around, resembled cheetahs speeding through the African brush. And the garden! Weeds I had not yet uprooted in the aisles had spread into a rough green shag carpet. Along the back wall, the sunflowers were nearly taller than I and beginning to form flowers. Bright zinnias had at last awoken, and the nasturtium with their red-orange blossoms formed an unruly base to the bed. Best of all, the vegetables were thriving: the beans formed a zealous two rows and were beginning to bear flowers and fruit, while the squash and melons were beginning to vine along and creep.
About when I spotted the zucchini, something changed for me. The two plants I had left of them were growing giant leaves bigger than my head from vines sturdy and furry. I imagined all the vining plants looking like that, and suddenly the garden seemed very small, and I knew that I was going to have a great deal of squash on my hands. It was no longer an uncertainty, but a concrete future happening that required preparation.
There awaits, therefore, a good deal of work to be done—not only in keeping a garden from becoming a jungle, or harvesting its fruit, but in putting its fruit to good use, honoring my own work, that of my friends, and of the land. As we discovered in picking cherries and jamming them, often the preservation is the greater of the two tasks. This is all well and good. I look forward to learning the art of canning and freezing and storing away, to finding the joy in the task and also in, with each one, easing a bit more the financial burden on a household like ours that yearns to host and serve and provide.
