I had such a good time with my garden last season. It was the first time I had ever capital-t Tended a garden in my life, and it was a deeply meaningful experience for me. I learned a lot about myself in the process, because I kept allowing my garden to be a metaphor. Also, I had more tomatoes than I could give away, the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen, peppers forever, and sunflowers that went up to here.
I have been intensely focused on CPTSD recovery from child abuse for a couple of years. I work on it in therapy every week, and I work on it in between sessions, when I’m able. Walking my garden twice a day gave me lots of opportunities to reflect on The Work that I was doing, and I’m pretty sure it gave me an extra d4+1 on all my saves.
I live in zone 10B, and we can grow just about anything here, all year long, if we’re willing to do some extra work during the frigid 40 degree nights we endure for up to a whole week every January. I’ve never done that before, because I’ve never felt connected enough to my garden to get the winter survival gear out of the trunk.
But this past winter, I thought I’d give it a go. I looked into it, and saw that most of the winter stuff available to me didn’t interest me enough to plant and Tend it. But I read about planting a cover crop, and that sounded pretty cool. I liked the idea of putting a ton of seeds down and staying out of their way while they did their thing for a couple of months.
I ended up choosing a mixture of oats, peas, and radishes. I cut everything down to a nub, to let the roots die off and nourish the soil, and tossed the seeds all over the place.
Over the winter, they sprouted and grew into one hell of a cover crop. The peas produced beautiful, delicate, purple and white flowers. The oats got so tall, and surprisingly smelled kind of sweet, too. Marlowe loved eating big blades of grass every day. I noticed that they sort of whistled or hummed softly when the breeze was just right. Depending on the sunlight, they looked green or blue.
About a month ago, they started to dry up. Marlowe lost interest in the grass, which I presume wasn’t as sweet as it was when it was still cold at night. Anne and I planned this season’s garden, with fewer tomatoes, and I began to prepare the planting beds.
I started clearing the cover crop out, one section at a time. The peas were all dead and crumbled in my hands. I turned them into the soil. There was one radish, a big daikon-looking thing that filled the air with a spicy blast when I yanked it up. Then there were the oats, three and four feet tall, growing in thick clumps that formed a tiny forest for ants. I pulled them out, one at a time, shaking all the soil off the roots. Dust clung to my hands and forearms.
I started on one side, and worked my way down and around, one clump at a time. The soil came up and fell off the roots easily. It fell back into fluffy mounds that I swept into the holes left behind. I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my right hand, then wiped the mud I’d left behind with my left hand. I tried both forearms before I started laughing and accepted my muddy forehead.
I kept working, silently thanking the oats for doing exactly what they were asked to do as I cleared one and then the next and the next.
I blinked sweat out of my eyes, shook some mud off my head, and looked at the newly-cleared garden. The soil was fluffy and rich. Loamy, I think they call it. It was ready for the growing season, and I was ready to plant it.
But first, in the final corner, there were a couple clumps of very tall, very thick, oats to pull out. I considered leaving them, so Marlowe could continue to have her grass snacks, but she hasn’t been that interested for about two weeks, at least.
“You have done all that was asked of you,” I said, “you can rest, now.” I wrapped my hand about the base of the clump nearest to me and gently pulled it up. I shook the soil out of its roots, put it to the side, and moved on to the next one. I stopped suddenly and stared through the little forest.
There was a deep green … something … against the wooden edge of the planter. Some kind of hornworm, maybe? A beetle I’ve never seen before? What the hell is that?
I parted the stalks and saw a single jalapeño hanging from the top of a single stalk. The nub I cut back at the end of last year, safely hidden by the cover crop, grew back at some point, flowered, and produced a single, perfect, beautiful fruit while nobody was looking, or expecting anything from it. I looked closer and two additional flowers revealed themselves.
I cleared the remaining oats, careful to not disturb my unexpected jalapeño. It’s obviously thriving, but the flowers are so delicate before they begin to bear fruit; they must be treated with care, even if that just means being careful around them. It’s good to do that, from time to time, I think: remember to take care. We can easily damage something we aren’t even thinking about, when we are careless.
I didn’t expect anything from the cover crop. I just put it down and hoped the seeds would grow. I didn’t expect anything from this jalapeño. In fact, Mr. Bond, I expected it to die.
It’s amazing what happens when we plant seeds, and tend to our gardens, without any expectations, isn’t it?
Discover more from WIL WHEATON dot NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Love you have a garden feeding your heart. Rock on and make it so!
Thank you for telling us about your unexpected crop of growth and protection for your garden. In the midst of the garbage news we hear everyday, these sweet moments and great mental images of Marlowe enjoying your ground cover is wonderful. Keep your garden growing for all of us!
It’s really all my mind has space for these days. “Chop wood and carry water”.
Copy, paste, save. There’s a lot here I need.
I think that someday when I have space, I would love to tend a little garden. It sounds peaceful.
What a refreshing break from the unrelenting chaos of our current world. Thank you!
Beautifully written, Wil
You are a gardener now! A beautiful chronicle. You learned the first learns. They keep coming! Enjoy.
I enjoyed your commentary on your garden, mine brings me joy as well. Did you know you can plant seeds from red peppers from the grocery store?!!! Green onions too, just plant the roots.
I work in a garden center and this is one of many reasons I love my job. Getting our hands dirty, feeding our bodies and souls, and facing things that often are completely out of our control. Gardening teaches patience, work, perseverance, and acceptance. That will be the best jalapeno you’ve ever eaten!
Beautiful❣️I love the details and the metaphors and allegories. Also, Unexpected Jalapeño would be a great band name❣️
Unexpected Jalapeño is the name of my Paul & Storm cover band
I love that so much. Are you a fellow JocoNaught?
Thank you for your story. It made me think differently about tending my flower garden (which I’m only able to enjoy for 5-6 months a year) and my life as a whole. ❤️
Gorgeous piece of writing! Thank you.
It’s lovely knowing there are sunny days and beautiful gardens and people who Tend them, even as my little part of the country is on our 13th rainy Saturday in 14 weeks and the only thing in my garden are the pansies I planted in April.
As a SFV vegetable gardener myself, your writing captures the whole process. The twice-a-day-check you speak of is my mind-healing time. Truly lovely description of the process. As you do with all things creative, you nailed it. And the persistence of the little spicy jalapeño is inspiring.
I hope to have a garden and time to tend it in a few years….restarted my life 7 years ago, including getting therapy for my own CPTSD and am finally feeling progress….and have goals and hopes for the first time in years. Thank you for sharing all your ups and downs, it helps not to feel alone.
Glad to know the gardening bug has you!
I’ve been an avid gardener for 35 years now.
Thank you, Wil, for this beautifully written spiritual romp through your garden.
What lovely writing! This was very evocative.
I’ve never heard of a “cover crop”. This is very interesting.
As a native Minnesotan, the idea of getting “winter survival gear” out for “frigid 40 degree nights” makes me giggle. 😉
You know that thing in your life that you get so busy you forget about it, and then it pops back in and just makes an unexpected bright spot on a rough day? That is your blog, sir. Thank you so much for sharing that part of you with us.
This was a beautiful piece of writing, Wil. I could smell the soil and the radish, and the contentment you have from gardening flows right off the page. Looking forward to when I can have my own garden but, in the meantime, I do need to thank you for the reminder that I need to add jalapenos to my grocery list. 😉
Gardening nourishes and restores the soul. I have gardened since I was a child and come from a long line of gardeners. My mother instilled in me a love of the craft and my daughter does it now, not only as part of her genetic code, but because it is therapy for her. She also weaves it into her art, and having just graduated from university in fine arts, fully intends to pursue a career marrying her love of arts and her need for plants. In my mind, there is nothing better that you can do for yourself than to tan the garden, no matter how big or small. I am so happy for you to have discovered the therapeutic gift that plants give us!
Thanks.
Sir. I’m a little teary-eyed over this beautiful story. <3
I’ve wished I lived in a place where I could have a garden like that and the sun wouldn’t destroy everything. It seems so satisfying! Sounds like you have a really good working meditation going!
Nature is nurture, indeed. I grow things in the ground that are just happy for a drink now and then, but we also grow critters… horses big & small, goats, alpacas, chickens. Tending to nature keeps you in the now and in sevice & humility.
Wil, it’s a really good thing that you are an author. You write so beautifully. You create such beautiful pictures with your words. It’s like I’m right there in the garden. Gardens, I think, are magical. I have a small raised vegetable garden that I had to cage in a couple of years ago so the rabbits and chipmunks wouldn’t eat everything every year. I love seeing the furry critters in my yard, but I do get annoyed when they eat my vegetables. They can have the dandelions. They can even eat my flowers if they really want to, but I’d like to keep the veggies for my family and I. 😀
Growing up (70’s/80’s) I spent a lot of time living with my grandparents in Libby, a tiny town in northwest Montana.
The gardens produced ALL of the produce for the whole year. My grandpa would plant tomatoes on the Southside wall; potatoes planted in special boxes he built himself. Raspberries against the chicken coop fence. Then he would plant rows and row off all the vegetables you could imagine in three north gardens. Cucumbers, carrots, green beans, onions, green onions, red lettuce, curly green lettuce, endive, Swiss chard, squashes–butternut, acorn, sugar pumpkin.
Though the gardens were mostly to provide food–my grandma always insisted that my grandpa put in 3 rows of sweet peas. She loved the sweet fragrance and how beautiful the flowers were. So many colors bright fuchsia pinks, pale cool blues, deep violet purple, yellow to bright to even look at directly, burnt orange, and so many others.
Every few days during blooming season, we would go out and cut giant bouquets. She would put them in vases all over the house. There is nothing. Nothing. Like waking up to the fragrance of a bright bouquet of sweet peas on your night stand.
I remember her saying very sternly–“Now, you kids stay out of that garden!” Grown up more than 40 years later, I realize she was tricking us. Pulling fresh peas from the vine and eating them whole. Unearthing baby carrots, brushing them off with our dirty fingers, rubbing most of the dirt off on our jeans, and biting into the crunchy fresh taste of the color ORANGE. The first ripe sweet tomato off the vine.
I sometimes come across people who say, “Why would we want to go back to the ‘good old days’ ? Me too. Love who you want. Provide for all. Protect the vulnerable. Defeat hate.
But, I really really miss my grandma and grandpa’s garden.
I love this. That’s all.
Tending a garden provides such wonderful therapy for both body and mind. It’s a bit different up here in the PNW (we live near Tacoma, WA) due to the climate: this year we had 6 full weeks of temperatures below freezing at night in January and February. Our crocus barely came up, and only a few of our daffodils and tulips bloomed, but the bulbs remain in the ground and should do better next spring. (40F = “frigid” cracked me up!). My veggie garden thrives inside the rabbit-proof fence my husband built: we’re well on our way to LOTS of snow peas, carrots, and spinach, and there are green tomatoes on the vines. [I throw out bits of carrot to our too-tame backyard rabbits, but at least they’re safe there rom coyotes.] A lone leaf lettuce plant surprised me with salad greens! It must have gone to seed last season. Our blueberries suffered from beastly heat (over 100F!) 2 summers ago; last year we saw a crop of about 17 berries. But this year, they’re back and ripening, dozens and dozens on 2 bushes! And I love the symbolism of dill: plant it once and it comes back every single year.
I too love this ❤️
Thank you for sharing these lovely thoughts. Up here in zone 4B I get pretty metaphorical myself in the garden. ❤️
This is beautifully written. I can relate so much to your reverence of Tending.
We tore a wooden deck out of our postage stamp sized back yard a few years ago and I have made many mistakes while turning it into a garden (planting Yerba Buena in the ground, for instance), but the whole thing is turned into one riotously green piece of nature in a sea of concrete and macadam. I come in my back gate after work and can feel the extra oxygen. We have bunnies and the tiniest, cutest field mice and birds that use the stems and trimmings for their nests in early spring, and the fattest earthworms I have ever seen. It’s the one place I can sit and just be.
Wil, how absolutely utterly beautiful. Blessings to you and upon your healing garden, the one within and the one you tend with so much love … one and the same. 💚
Lots to love here. 40 degree winters are something I can only dream of haha, surprise jalapeños are probably the best kind! Cheers and happy gardening.
I love this.
I am new here. (But not to your overall story.) It feels good to read your words and go, “Oh! I’m not alone in this!” So much of your experience resonates. Thank you for sharing your hard work and insights. It helps me feel better.
Wil, I’m glad you posted today because it reminded me that you had a cameo in my dream last night
Awesome write-up – I love how you communicated the calming and regeneration you get from gardening; it reminds me of my new yard. My wife and I moved into a “new to us” place a few years ago. The previous owners had GREEN thumbs and planted an amazing array of plants and flowers that bloom at various times through the season (Seattle, so, the “season” isn’t anywhere what SoCal’s is – I do remember that from my younger days).
So, I’ve been learning what needs to be done at the end of the season / winter / early spring to get everything ready for the next growing season. This last year I apparently, accidentally, did some things really right.
The rhododendron flourished for the first time since we’ve been here. The raspberries are almost as tall as I am. My tomato plants are about as long as my arm and starting to get buds. The new raised beds have peas budding, lettuce popping up, little carrot tops growing. And somehow the snapdragons are about 7 feet tall (or they were, before I trimmed a bunch of them back today so the tomatoes could get more sun).
Keep gardening and keep enjoying!
p.s. A few months ago, I asked you on reddit what you’re currently playing, and you recommended Chromino. You’re an evil person. That shit’s addictive.
Lovely. Thanks for sharing, Wil.
This is beautiful and exactly what I needed today. Thank you!
Wil you have captured the joy of gardening. Working in nature can be great therapy. Now I need to get myself outside and get my yard in shape. And myself as well. Thanks for the encouragement.
Yes! I love gardening. I feel like it is a fun hands on science experiment every year. I too have too many tomato plants in the garden and not enough room for the other 20… (yikes).
What I learned recently is that peppers can actually be overwintered. You can cut it back to the first y split in the plant and remove all the leaves and with your 40 degree winter you might be able to leave them in. Supposedly they give you a head start on the crop which is super important for my zone (zone 4b – frigid north don’t you know). I can take my pepper plants out and do this and repot them and put them in my garage over the gross cold winter and let them be dormant, then wake them up when the weather gets better and extend my growing season by the head start. I’m not super up on your zone except jealous of the long, long growing season.
Thank you so much for sharing. Keep sharing, Dirt therapy is the best.
All right, two other people have made the same comment I was going to make about “unexpected jalapeño” being a great band name. I’m in good company here.
Ha! I just commented that it was going to be the name of my Los Lobos cover band!
Just what I needed to read today. You brought me the gift of peace. I needed that today. Thank you.
Absolutely beautiful Wil. Thank you.
If/when we’re lucky, we live long enough to be Boothby. 🙂
Aw, I love this.
Absolutely beautiful, Wil.
Oh, and Unexpected Jalapeno is going to be the name of my Los Lobos cover band.
Magical.
I have been told we can keep our pepper plants here in 8b if we pot them and bring them inside someplace cool. Haven’t tried that yet.
My garden has been part of my mental health journey too. This year I have been replacing my raised beds so lots of hours in the dirt. I usually have podcasts and audiobooks to keep me company. Your new podcast has been great company while shoveling.