You Grow Girl™

You know that feeling of amazement when the first seeds come up in the spring-- that bit of surprise, and the accompanying excitement, that things are actually growing? It has become such a gardening cliche, but I still identify with it. Those tiny little specs of green poke their heads to the world, and you sit admiring them, checking back several times a day to see if any new ones have broken through. It's as though the winter erases a little part of your memory, so that even though you've been through it year after year, the emergence of little green ones still has that exciting new-ness.

Well, in my experience moments like this occur throughout the season, and here in Michigan in mid-July it's happened again. Because my hands are involved in many a garden around town (community, youth, and school gardens I've built or support), these days I may be away from any given garden for a week or more, and I forget just how much can happen in that time. A cool spring here caused a slow start to the warm-loving crops and flowers, so it was to my surprise during a recent visit to the youth garden that in a week's time sunflowers -- which I swear were under two feet just days before -- were now over my head and blooming. The garden quite literally blossomed in my absence (including the weeds, of course), and suddenly we could pick chard and broccoli, see green tomatoes all around us, hide in the 6 foot tall native prairie, and bask in the colors that had grown taller than our heads. This may seem like an obvious remark during July, but I couldn't help but be amazed, and a bit surprised, that it happened again. Despite albums full of photos documenting each stage of the last four garden seasons here, so easily I forget just how awe-inspiring the height of the season is, and how very much of it is independent of human doing, minus some TLC in the spring and the addition of a load of compost or two. I am convinced, though, that there's a point in early summer when the garden is done with the spring tease of peas and spinach that it just decides that it's time to start really growing, and pretty much everything just takes off, ne'er to be stopped, unless the japanese beetles win the summer war this year.

It could just be that I have a memory problem, or that I'm good friends with someone named d-e-n-i-a-l, but I also can't quite believe that come October these colors and crops will fade, making way for too many months of gray skies and barren grounds. Snow is nice, ice can be pretty, but when it's November, and you know there'll still be a chance that a hard frost can occur in April, the forecast for cold months seems pretty drab, and endless. Although I watch the fall sweep in every year and the growing season inevitably come to a close, from the vantage point of July part of me is convinced that this year will be different, that it won't end and December will still bring fresh basil and tomatoes. My partner's from California, and tells tales of year-round harvests out there in warm-person land, and while part of me salivates at the idea, a bigger part loves the cycle of surprise, awe, and denial that leads me through the distinct seasons of growing.

I'm a forward-thinker, thriving on new ideas and possibilities -- so sometimes I have trouble staying the present. In the garden, though, I'm grounded in the right here and right now. So today, here, in mid-July I can soak in the right now of it all, and appreciate those little memory lapses that block my knowledge of what comes next. Dar Williams has a line about it in her song "February" that gets me every time -- "I stopped and pointed and I said 'that's a crocus,' and you said, 'what's a crocus,' and I said 'it's a flower.' I tried to remember but I said 'what's a flower' and you said-- 'I still love you...'"

Here's to the joy of forgetting, and the excitement of rediscovering, year after year after year...