My garden has always been my soul food, my solace, the sacred keeper of my daydreams. It has always been a place of peace and solitude and escape, but we are in a new place and my garden is barely a garden. We moved here last November and slowly began claiming a square of earth for gardening and we've only just barely scratched out a tiny corner of what we dream it will be someday. Despite the fact that the soil is bad, the space is limited, and the weather has been dreadfully hot and dry, I have kept my hope alive...even in the midst of a long list of past failures at growing various things I've maintained my hope and my faith that I can farm and garden like my Dad did. This summer has been brutal, but every other day I spent roughly two hours dragging hoses, connecting and reconnecting my soakers, and running water on a timer trying to be smart about it. I've never given up even when the native trees in the woods were dying and the grass crunched under my feet and the sweat rolled down my body and I was so tired that I thought I would drop.
Some days I thought I was wasting precious water and should just stop, but I simply could not. I would tell myself that to stop watering after all those past weeks would be a waste....a waste of water, of time and effort, but what I failed to say to myself in those moments was that giving up would have meant giving up my HOPE.
In the last few weeks, I've been rewarded for my efforts with yellow squash and cucumbers and tiny little bell peppers and basil plants that will yield several batches of pesto later this fall. Today, there was finally a bloom on my loofah vines and the Lantana we planted over Japhy J's grave is full of happy little flowers.
Hope is alive out there in my garden.
