The Inadvertent Gardener

Apparently, over the winter, someone decided to throw approximately 1,000 small twigs into my garden plot. It’s lucky that, although I definitely have areas in which I exhibit great symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the garden is not one of those areas. Therefore, on Sunday evening, I picked about 428 of those twigs out of the garden before giving up and just deciding that the remaining ones provided some interest, and also a good challenge for the seedlings to come. The really strong ones, after all, ought to be able to push the twigs out of the way, right?

Don’t worry, Master Gardeners. I’ll pick more out in the next couple of days.

Besides the twigs, I needed to remove the clumps of grass that had infiltrated the plot over the winter, which is miraculous, because how the grass was able to be all sneaky like that underneath 20 inches of snow baffles me considerably. I also yanked any dead plants that would have come out if said snow hadn’t snuck up on me itself before I had time to clean much up last year.

But there were signs of life. Besides the garlic and the aforementioned baby spinach that is just coming up all on its own, it appears that one of my sage plants is resurrecting itself. There were some green baby leaves that are destined to become tasty treats sooner rather than later.

I yanked the rest of the sage plants as carefully as I could so I wouldn’t disturb the newcomers, and took all the dead plants over to the compost pile. Then I set about turning over the soil, unearthing all manner of worms who were not particularly thrilled to see me hanging out. Then I got moving on dropping in seeds in my normal, laissez faire manner, starting with the chard, which has bony little seeds that I loved from the moment I saw them.

After the chard, I moved on to the rest: spinach, rosemary, sage, Italian parsley and some green beans. Once I had put far too many seeds in, as usual, ignoring the wise advice of the back of the seed packet, I covered everything up. Then I stepped back from the garden plot, the sun setting behind me, and nodded. Oh, tasty spinach. Oh, tasty chard. Oh, delicious herbs. I hope some of you come up soon, despite my best efforts to plant you incorrectly.

I have been struggling with a distinct lack of gardening momentum. The weather finally kicked into gear and warmed up, and yet my garden plot sat, in the backyard, untidy and neglected. Sure, there’s some garlic poking up through the ground, but the rest? Home to dead sage, dead Texas Tarragon, dead rosemary, dead greens…well, you get the idea.

I never even put in a seed order. How ridiculous is that? Every other gardener I know spent the miserable winter ordering seeds willy-nilly, but I couldn’t even get myself to imagine that far in advance, so I skipped that whole process. I mean, yeah, I did buy those Italian seeds back in February, but that doesn’t possibly compete with all those gardeners who spend time plotting out their gardens on graph paper long before winter winds to a close.

On Sunday afternoon, though, after reading the Michael Pollan article I mentioned on Monday, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I took a walk over to the co-op to get a few things, and availed myself of their rack of Seed Savers seed packets. Thank you, New Pioneer Co-op, for not only providing me with a source for my favorite single source honey and a prodigious amount of wine, but for also allowing me to be utterly lazy about planning my garden yet still buy really quality seeds from a cool source.

I went for things I could plant this early in the season, because it looks like we still have some fairly chilly nights ahead. In other words, I did not pick out basil, but I did grab spinach, chard, green beans, rosemary, sage and Italian parsley.

I headed home again, seeds in my Inadvertent Gardener tote bag, glad that even though I’d procrastinated into the late afternoon, there was still plenty of light out in the garden. As I walked down Washington Street toward home, imagining how I’d lay out the seeds I just bought. Who needs graph paper, anyway?

Yesterday afternoon, I clicked on the link to Michael Pollan’s excellent New York Times Magazine piece on all the good things that arise from gardening—his focus is on climate change and the behavioral shift everyone must undergo to make any kind of difference in the daunting problem, but he makes the eloquent case about why we ought to all grow some of our own food. A few minutes later, an email came in from a friend in California, sending the article my way.

It’s a piece worth sharing, and not just because Michael Pollan is my hero. I wish everyone thought this way, and I realize that I’m speaking as someone who came pretty late to the gardening party. But now that I’ve lived a life where I can just run out to the yard and clip some herbs to throw in whatever meal I’m cooking up, there’s no going back, and I want everyone to experience the same thing. It really doesn’t matter whether you get your food at your local superstore or at a co-op or even the farmer’s market (although if you’re not going to grow it yourself, farmer’s market up, people, ’cause it’s good stuff, too)—the best, healthiest, most delicious, most amazing food is always going to be what you grew yourself.

For me, the connection Pollan draws to climate change is a worthy one, but the other connections he talks about—to the miracle of how something starts as a speck-like seed and becomes edible just with the addition of some sun and air and dirt and water, to the neighbors around you, to the land itself—are the ones that I value the most highly.

That being said, I fully agree with Pollan. If you make those connections, the larger one—the willingness to make changes that will benefit the climate without feeling like you’re yelling into some sort of howling void—will come easier, too.

UPDATE: You can also learn more about what the company I work for is doing on this front in my post re: the Pollan article for The GeoVoices blog.

…and after last year, that thrills me more than I can say. Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

When I was in college, I had a lot of things at the top of my mind: what cheese-laden item would be most tasty at the dining hall at dinner, when I was going to leave campus to drive to visit my boyfriend (two hours away and he didn’t own a car—I definitely know how to pick ‘em), whether I was going to be able to get up in time for swim practice… Gardening? Not one of the things I spent a lot of time thinking about.

In fact, I didn’t even think that much about cooking. My college roommate can tell you a horrible story about my one experiment with Hamburger Helper, and I was often more interested in making a Waffle House run than actually cooking anything. I did whip up a mess of pancakes for a sudden and quite welcome influx of 9 midshipmen who drove down from the Naval Academy one weekend to visit me and my friends (I went to a women’s college, people. That weekend goes down in my mind as one of the miraculous ones that made college great…), but I think I used a big box of Bisquick to make that happen.

My own college experience meant I kind of chuckled when I got a call from The Daily Iowan, the independent newspaper at the University of Iowa, from Brian Stewart, a reporter interested in doing a story about me and the blog. College students? Interested in gardening? Alrighty, then.

The next step in the process was a photo shoot that, because of my schedule this week, had to take place Wednesday morning before I went to work. Ever-patient photographer Beth Skogen got out of bed at an ungodly hour to come to my house and shoot me (I’m sure, when her alarm went off, that took on a very different meaning…) making a frittata. Brittney Hibbs of DITV, the television arm of the news-gathering organization, decided to cover it, too, so there I was, in the kitchen, wielding a chopping knife under pressure of two cameras: one still, one motion.

That was worse than trying to pull off my first Thanksgiving, people. Much, much worse. Much more pressure.

Regardless, the story ran today, and it makes me sound fairly articulate, possibly because I sent a piece of frittata along with Beth to take back to Brian in the newsroom. (Note to the Journalism Ethics Police: I’m kidding about that last part. I’m sure Brian would have written a fabulous article with or without sustenance.) Anyway, if you’d like, check it out, although know that it might require (free) registration to read the article. If I get a link to the DITV story, I’ll post that, too.

(And hey…Alanna…that last quote in the article? I dedicate that one to you…)

UPDATE: If you go to the the box to the right of the story and click on “Play Today’s Newscast,” you can see the television version of the story. The segment’s right in the middle of the newscast, just after the weather and a story about some singers at West High in Iowa City. If you let the file load, you can navigate through the newscast with the slider bar. I’m not sure how long it will be available, so act now if you want to see me talking with my hands and wielding a big knife!