When Gardening Takes a Rough Turn

I was talking to little lettuce plants on a comfortable Saturday morning in my backyard.  I had made a couple trips back and forth from the front yard, then settled on this project of refreshing a frozen-back warm season bed with supplemental soil and cool season starts and seeds.  My dog was wandering nearby among the booming population of bluebells.  I was in my happy place. 

Frantic screams pierced the morning.  I looked in their direction but could not see the source.  What I could see was my gate – open.  I could not see my dog.  I’ll rush through the resulting long story: a neighbor was terrified because my dog had lunged out at her dog, I intervened and got my dog, I proceeded with remedies to the gate and supervision and dog training and attempts to talk with my neighbor, she responded with threats, and now our family has to calculate when we take walks in order to avoid any encounters.  My zoning in on gardening one peaceful February morning – in some ways like so many others – took a far-reaching rough turn because I left the gate open. 

Is your garden a place of retreat, respite?  Even if plants wither and pests interfere, is poking around outside an activity that feels right?  As a kid, playing and working in my yard or my grandparents’ yard helped me feel healthy and safe.  As a young adult, I led a school gardening project with joy, in part as a balance to stresses of college.  As a parent, when my kids were little, I could breathe best while pulling weeds or watching my boys at water play.  During the pandemic, I found great solace in my current school garden or Marana Community Garden plots, away from home entirely.  Participants in present-day public classes light up telling me of gardening successes, and I know I am part of a wider, rich circle. 

What happens when a safe space is intruded upon?  A few weeks after my dog got out at home, a different stress arose at work.  An unknown vandal broke into my school garden, made a mess, and left with weirdly miscellaneous materials.  I happened to be in the Marana Community Garden when I got the call that something was amiss.  I abruptly switched gears from cleaning up weeds – a favorite task – to making repairs and inventorying losses.  Where I expect to regularly discover natural changes, I now also discover missing sand paper one day, missing compost bucket another day.  The space I typically greet with a light heart for me and cheerful words for plants and chickens, I now open up with suspicion and caution. 

As a further weight on this gardening teacher’s mind, a rough thing happened during a public class the same week as the vandalism.  A participant repeatedly complained, loudly, about gardening.  I repeatedly tried to both validate her past struggles and turn the lesson back to planting possibilities.  She ended up walking out.  This was only the second time in over five years that I had such a struggle connecting with an adult student.  I ended the class on a higher note with the remaining participants who were eating up planting tips and speed-planting their food and flowers.  I left both perplexed at the event and relieved to head home. 

I sorely needed some silver linings.  With effort, here are a few positive turns:

• The self-closing spring on the back gate got fixed, a joint project for my husband and me and an overdue to-do list item checked off.
• The school flowers kept blooming.  While photographing damage and fixes in the school garden, I intentionally stopped to sit in the large flower bed and take a picture of poppies, snapdragons, and asters to share with volunteers. 
• “Are the chickens OK?” was the common thread when I informed volunteers, colleagues, and family members about school garden worries.  Safe chickens and kind humans helped a lot. 
• The backyard cool season veggie bed I started in February took off in March and April (title image).  I ended up re-starting the lettuce, whose roots had dried out in my hurry to get my dog.  But that lush green patch and yesterday’s first snap pea snack are rewards for trying and trying again. 
• There are always weeds to pull. A conversation through my school garden fence – while I was weeding – brought back my belief that gardening as mediation is a real tool, one that I can successfully wield.  The passing stranger went from angry and offensive to friendly and nostalgic because I was there, dared to say hello, and was receptive to his story of pulling weeds at his own school as a child. 
• Since my difficult class in March, I led three other group programs. Participants have, to my knowledge, had a positive experience planting for local seasons and – a fun first – for their pets!
• I recognized that the vast majority of the time, the people and places around me are good.   Glen Phillips’ _Courage_ lyrics fished me out of my mental hole a few weeks back, “The only reason anybody can still feel safe is most people still knock on the door.”
• This morning, my train-and-exercise-the-dog walk doubled as model-staying-calm-and-working-through-stress time with my accompanying son.  We encountered a javelina, my son was more nervous than my dog, all of us waited and observed then continued around the block safely, and the morning moved on.  Progress for animal care and parenting can be parallel. 

Could I catch my breath before the next rough turns? My wish, I can now say from solidly in the month of April, was granted.  The break from solving immediate problems stemming from gardening has made time for resolving earlier ones and returning focus to normal needs – whether weeding or planting or planning or parenting.  In that same time period, our family also enjoyed previously planned trips and navigated unplanned health and employment detours.  The path of gardening and garden teaching again feels solid enough to help move us all forward.