Thursday, May 15, 2014

Perspective

As ever, starting a new garden season reminds me of years past.  I watch R wandering (totally bored) around the Cherry Hill community garden plots and remember that first year I brought him to the garden, when I put a few lengths of string along the sides of my plot to keep him from walking in others' gardens.  We plant peas together and I remember the boys and my nieces picking and eating peas off the vine last spring.  How few years of them I will get!  I look around the garden at those who have returned from previous years and think about those who haven't.  Those who retired, or moved, or got discouraged.  About my friend Andy, who passed away last year and won't be building any trellises this spring.  The garden goes on without them, inexorable.



I plant some things too early and some later than I should, just as I did last year.  A whole new crop of seedlings languishes under the shoplights, suffering my usual late-season neglect.  I fancy I've learned some new things this year - found new tricks or tools or techniques I wasn't aware of.  Next year someone else will figure them out, too.  Everything changes in the garden, and nothing does.  In a thousand years, when everything I have ever done and thought and built is gone, people will still take out tools and seeds with hope and excitement and, thinking eagerly about the riches to come, plant things.

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