To become a gardener

My husband and I went to a supremely inspiring movie a while back...To Make a Farm.  In it, Tarrah Young from Being Green Farm compares a gardener to a symphony musician.  She observes that a gardener might have 30 or 40 tries to learn how to garden and be really successful at it, as there's only one try a year.  But a musician - say Beethoven - would have likely practiced the same piece hundreds or even thousands of times before performing it for an audience.  The conclusion...the learning curve for the gardener is very steep.

Tonight, her observation stayed with me for a long time as I reflected on our gardening experiences.  I've already mentioned some of our failures this year.  And we've had more learnings since.  Like where we will put our bok choy next year so that it will hopefully not go straight to seed.  And how we will keep the ants from eating our sui choy.  And what we will do to try and prevent water from simply floating over the dirt and making its way to the sidewalk instead of nourishing our onion patch. 

My heart is at ease knowing that my children are learning beside me, and that they are already on their way on the gardening learning curve.  And it's exciting that they too are marvelling at how quickly nature can take its course.  When my daughters and I went to our community garden plot, I asked if they noticed anything different.  Jaelyn immediately saw the peas that we will likely be able to pick later this week.  And that the pumpkins were almost twice as big as they were the last time we visited.  And that our potatoes, which we had planted just a week ago in our failed corn patch, were starting to come through.  And that 21 corn plants did make it after all.  She immediately set to weeding, then got out the hose and started watering.  Then knew when she'd had enough and played with her sister while Mama finished up.

And we're having some successes too.  Like enjoying the first few raspberries of the season.  Or munching on cilantro just because it's there and ripe for the picking.  Or the tomatoes that are doing fabulous.  Or those peas at the community garden.  And now I've realized that I've moved up the learning curve too, because now I know when the peas will be ready.  I know when our lilies will burst open.  I know when the corn can be picked.  These are things I didn't know too long ago, but that knowledge is with me now.  And I can share it with our little ones.

I truly love being on this learning journey together.