A Hill of Beans

Back in Confluence, it's time to start thinking about putting out vegetables.

It's embarrassing to admit it, but I do not come from a long line of gardeners, and as such, my knowledge of planting things is rather limited. Neither of my parents had much to do with growing things in our back yard; the three or four plants I can remember having in our house all fell victim to my mother, whose careful skill in nurturing children simply did not translate to horticulture. Our back porch became a graveyard for ceramic pots filled with departed Easter lilies, daisies, and ferns.

Most folks in town have a garden, or they subscribe to one of the community plots by the Episcopal church, so my life has until now easily avoided tilling my own ground. Every Sunday, three or four of the little old ladies in the church will pass me a plastic bag filled with squash and tomatoes, okra and corn, peppers and cabbage. My advice to the good people who troll farmer's markets every weekend: present yourself as a pitiful city-dweller who doesn't know a sprout from a hole in the ground at church. You will eat like a king.

One of my herbal suppliers--no seriously, she brings me rosemary--has fallen ill, though. Her name is Brenda May Elder, and she is suffering from cancer. I doubt I need to describe the trauma of chemotherapy on an octogenarian. Her husband, Eddie, died four years ago, but every spring she would plow the earth in her side yard, spinning the clumps until they became finer and finer, pulling the clay into something rich and hospitable, and then she would drop seeds and seedlings one by one, set things out as she called it.

From there, she mended the plot over the coming months, trudging through the rows in light colored slacks, a collared shirt, and a straw hat. She tugged at weeds and nicked off leaves that ought to be put aside. She knew just what to do. And every Sunday, her bounty would be so great that part of it would be set aside for me.

This spring, she's confined to her living room, tortured by the bay window that looks out onto her yard. The garden has grown over with weeds, but a few wild flowers poke up here and there. It might seem like a stupid thing to do, but I decided to grow a garden so I could give Brenda back all the vegetables she loaned me over the past decade or so.

Ambition being my only worthwhile quality in this endeavor, I knew enough to call on a certain oddball neighbor of mine, Johnny Rabbit. Johnny fought in Vietnam, married a girl there, renounced violence, became Buddhist, spent a decade in Cambodia "helping out," whatever that means, got stabbed in some kind of revolution rally in Asia, gave up religion altogether, and moved to Confluence by accident. Every year, the quiet man on the edge of town had three of the best looking rows of corn you'd ever seen.

I'd used this last compliment as a pickup line of sorts, enticement for the strange bird with the rose colored glasses to help me plant vegetables.

"Johnny," I said, "I'm pretty sure I can put the stuff in the ground. But your plants always look so great. I was just talking about your corn to somebody."

Seriously, this is how I feel like I have to talk to people like Johnny. He gave me an odd look.

"It's a pain in the ass."

"Gardening?"

"The corn. Deer gets to it." He paused. "They'll eat it all."

I nodded. What do you do to prevent that, I wondered out loud.

"Shoot them."

***

So there we were, Johnny Rabbit and yours truly, running a tiller through my back yard, next to the slat fence. I liberated the soil. I have turned the earth, and I am proud of it. Now, from my window in the kitchen, I can look out on four tiny tomato plants, a row of beans, and a half dozen corn stalks. Tomorrow I'll pick up a cucumber vine from the hardware store and maybe some potatoes and cantaloupe. Johnny showed me how to arrange it and set up the garden hose for irrigation, told me which plants do well in our valley, and which ones only seem to invite misery and blight.

I haven't a clue if I will produce a single edible thing. But I know that after the day's work I spent in my yard to simply plant my garden, I will never once take for granted a bag of tomatoes given to me by someone four decades older than me out of pity.