The Joy of Oblivion

I am spending a LOT of time getting ready for gardening season these days. I have cleaned, sharpened and oiled my tools; sorted my seed packs and made lists of what to start when, where, and how; I've already planted out the strawberries, the onion starts, and some of the cool weather seeds that prefer direct sowing. I have even (don't laugh) covered all of my garden beds that sport cover crops with yards of thick plastic sheeting to keep the soil from becoming too waterlogged and to warm it up. I know, I know. I am a little bit over the top...

In my defense, we are still eating veg from last season courtesy of our two deep freezers humming away on the garage. I can easily justify all the effort, to say nothing of the eccentric behavior. Well, most of it. Setting up the heating pad and the CD player to serenade my seed starts with classical music may have been a little over the top. But you really can't beat the taste of well pampered, homegrown fruits and veggies.

So on this train of thought, I have spent a lot of time pondering the role of the urban farmer (ME!) and gardener in the greater picture of life. Every year, one of the most persistent thoughts I have (besides how many slugs there are in my garden, how fun it is to get my hands dirty, how much I detest slugs, and how did all these slugs GET here???) is how similar being a gardener (or farm-ily challenged farmer, as I like to call myself) is to being a mom.

At first glance, it seems like these two vocations are not that closely related, but I submit the following evidence for your consideration. These are just a few of the numerous comparisons I have found. Maybe I'll write a book, Motherhood and Garden, The Joy of Oblivion.

1. You forget how bad it really was. By this, I mean that enough time has passed from one birthing to the next, or from one planting to the next, that you have forgotten just how awful the whole thing really was last time. If we had to give birth with only a month or three to recover and then thought about doing it again... well, we'd all end up with one kid and one garden. It's the same with gardening. Every year, I put in all this work and slave away all summer, only to have slugs or raccoons or small children tornado through and destroy all the fruits of my labor (The Tiny Tornado, or T3, and the resulting carnage is another similarity between gardening and parenting.)I need an entire winter to forget just how maddening the last time was.

2. You have to accept that a little dirt never hurt. Kids attract dirt like firemen to a burning building. No amount of isolation, preventative measures, or encasing them in giant plastic bubbles will keep them from finding their destiny. In fact, kids don't even need to go find the dirt; it finds them. Case in point, Tater Tot takes a bath, puts on her PJs, walks out of the room for 12 seconds, and then reappears with a mysterious beard of dirt, grubby hands and unknown substances smeared across her previously spotless PJs. Spooky... As for the garden, well the dirt connection is obvious. But I will take it a step further and tell you, that mysterious, symbiotic relationship the kids have with dirt, it happens to me in the garden. I cannot seem to walk through the garden without finding dirt under my nails, smudges on my arms and face, and the cuffs and knees of my jeans stained by the time I reach the other side. Spooky...

3. Yelling has no impact whatsoever. And trust me, I have done extensive testing on this concept. I have always been a yeller and probably always will be. It works on kids as well as it works on plants. By that I mean not at all. Standing in the garden, berating a tomato plant for having blossom end rot is not very productive in produce production. It IS however, entertaining for the neighbors. At least, that's what they always tell me. Yelling at the kids for pulling all the blossoms of one of my squash plants to make Barbie parachutes gets pretty much the same response. Kids/plants standing silently before me and then toddling off. (well the kids, not the plants)

4. Hard work and hands-on involvement really does pay off. So I am told. And I believe it. The more effort I put into my garden, the bigger the yields. The produce is healthier, more plentiful, and tastes amazing. The more quality time I spend there results in compound interest which equals two full freezers and lots of happy neighbors. Kids are hard work too, and need lots of quality, hands-on interaction. Sometimes I feel too tired, or not in the mood, and that's ok. But I know that spending as much quality time with them as possible, and by putting in the hard work of parenting, I am helping them to grow. They are growing, not like weeds, as the saying goes, but like scarlet runner beans or summer squash. My kids and my garden are reaching for the sky and the only thing holding them back is gravity.