Seeds

May 10, 2021

The little house in which we landed here in the Upstate has too-small closets, oddly placed light fixtures and switches, a creaky, paint-chipped deck. That is, it has character, which is what we looked for, instead of a sleek new-build shell in a treeless subdivision. Three weekends in, we did without hot water for three days when the water heater failed. Our first new home in 33 years has rewarded us as we hoped it would, but still challenges our modest management skills. Except for the water heater, that means ignoring the nits or pushing them into the undefined future.

None of the rough edges, the ones we could see, mattered much in February when I first saw the house. It has a backyard—rectangular, uniform, level. Half the area then was a mix of dead grass and weeds. But the other half is set off by a border showing that someone at one time had planted a garden. Then I knew I wanted the place.

People in great cities grow vegetables, fruit, flowers. Affluent and low-income neighborhoods nearly everywhere are home to people who find joy in planting, cultivating, harvesting, often for the benefit of others. City governments encourage community gardens, which by midsummer may explode in colorful bounties of produce. These may be islands of civility, calm, peace, often in wider spaces of chaos. The labor of growing things that are good for people is itself a virtue.

Our idea was to plant a garden. We recalled the success of our Nashville garden, where the soil was black and rich and everything grew, tomatoes, green beans, squash, okra, even melons. When ripe the veggies fell off the plants. Occasionally I worked it, hoeing and pulling weeds, but not much. Sometimes we harvested enough to give away.

I tried again at our Virginia home, but the soil there is poor and filled with chunks of waste concrete buried by construction crews decades ago. The yard is shadowed by huge trees that block sunlight, but don’t ease the jungle-like humidity and heat of the Potomac River basin in summer. I gave up on gardening early.

When I was a kid my parents had a garden in their New Jersey backyard, I recall giant tomato plants. Gardening in the South, though, prompts my imagination of lyrical and mysterious, poignant, even ghostly things. It was to these parts and others that before the War for Independence rich growers pushed poor or unlucky folks west, out of the fertile Virginia and Carolina coastal lowlands to make room for tobacco, rice, and indigo. They were forced to scratch out a living in what then was wilderness. They horse-plowed the tough red clay found everywhere around here to plant subsistence plots. Small, isolated backwoods communities were pocked with poverty and hardship, feuding, and violence.

My idea was a garden, not a farm, to pretty up the yard by planting the brown, bare back half quickly before it was overrun with weeds. My daughter recommended a soil test, they sell cheap ones at Lowe’s. The “pH” looked good for tomatoes, a few other things. I commenced digging holes for three tiny plants, quickly hitting the concrete-like clay. I leaned on the shovel, panting and gasping, then stuck the plants in and sprinkled them with Miracl-Gro. Within days one withered.

I envisioned an Eden-like kaleidoscope of floral color and planted sunflower, marigold and zinnia seeds, nixing the already-started beds. Nearby I stuck in basil, sage, cilantro, and okra seedlings to jump-start a green look. In the plot along the back fence I planted beans, squash, cantaloupe, lettuce. Every day for a week in the warm Carolina sun I hacked away at the clay, scraping long trenches with the pick the former owner had left us, then bending double to spread the seeds and water them. Each morning afterward my back ached and throbbed.

I glanced only briefly at the instructions on the seed packages. I didn’t pay much attention to the intricacies of exactly when in springtime to plant, or how deep or how far apart the seeds should be sown. Still, each morning I looked out impatiently at the yard.

A week or so after I finished, in late April, the TV weather lady warned of an approaching freeze. “Cover those new plants,” she chided. I either didn’t take her seriously or didn’t want to bother. Sometimes, as we know, these TV weather people try to scare you. They call for snow in your town, it doesn’t snow. They predict sunshine, it’s chilly and overcast.

This time she got it right. The mercury sank to 30 F, maybe lower. I looked outside, the leaves of my okra and sage were withered and dead. At Lowe’s Garden Center an indifferent or overworked staff had left the outdoor beds uncovered. Row after row of tiny plants were killed by the cold.

I surveyed my backyard garden, brown and bare, my silent spring. Only the sunflowers were timidly emerging. The dirt stared back at me, the sticks I used to mark my planted rows tilting forlornly where I had inserted them in the soil, marking only the faint imprint of my spade. I watered yet again. Within days the two plots were faintly dotted with green as the long-established weeds, the clover, chickweed, buttercup, and others I didn’t recognize surged to the surface. The stuff I planted, still no-shows.

I tramped back to Lowe’s and bought more seeds: spinach, onion, peppers, more beans, more squash, more marigolds and zinnias. Grinding my teeth, I scraped new rows, planted and watered the seeds, threw the hose down and stomped into the house. I wondered: what’s wrong with my soil? Excess lime? Toxic chemicals? Do I know what I’m doing? I bent over and glared at the surface. Weeds, then nothing.

Since then the days have grown warmer. I’m still watering, but not as often. I’ve quit with the Miracl-Gro, wondering if I overwhelmed the seeds. I’ve learned to relax. I see us still getting our vegetables at the Food Lion all summer then next fall and winter.

Then the other day I saw something. Tiny sprouts had emerged, a fraction of an inch long, about where I had planted the beans. I could see microscopic, bright-green leaves peeking out where I thought I had sown the lettuce. An irregular row of inch-long seedlings was visible where I left the zinnia seeds. I then spied the tiny, bent leaves of a squash plant about where I had planted it.

I stepped back, from ten feet away I saw only the weeds. But Spring was breaking out in my garden. The seeds I bought and planted apparently were alive, after all. Well, some of them. So far, just tiny bits of green, no promise of bushels of ripe vegetables by late summer. We’ll still be waiting in line at the grocery or farmer’s market. But something is out there.