4 - Wednesday, July 31, 1991 - North Shore News Digging into some rea! dirt I'VE GOT dirt under my fingernails. It feels great. As I get older, I tind | garden with more enthusiasm than ever, Maybe it’s even becoming obsessive. The act of gardening fascinates me. There are so many levels in- volved. If I'm inclined, I can fan- cy that ['m actually tending to my planet. At this level, we’re not talking dirt here. We're taiking about the Earth Itself. This is probably sacred business. There is definitely a mystical side to gardening. Anyone who doesn't recognize it isn’! paying full attention. I'll be down on my knees, packing soil around a transplanted tomato, when sud- denly I'm hit by this feeling of awe. No, ‘*hit’’ is the wrong word. Rather, | slide off into a pool of awe, One momeat my head will still be full of the day’s dramas and complications and demands, the next my busy brain has shifted gears and I am aware only of the magnificence of the young tomato plant, the rich smell of the soit... Gardening is a form of medita- tion, I guess. Obviously, there is a difference between working for a living ona farm and gardening in your back yard in the evenings and weekends. For generation upon generation, farm labor was the curse of hu- manity. Look how quick we were to turn the farms over to machines and flee to the cities. Only to wind up, hoe in hand, on your knees toiling in a patch of vegetables. And liking it. Con- sidering it a privilege. Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL thrives on a diet of dioxins and styrofoam, The garden is, of course, a jungle. A tidy little jungle, on the surface. But when you get down and plunge your hands into it, you find yourself immediately engaged in a battle that has gone on since the dawn of evolution. cis a struggle for control of one little corner of Creation. The enemies are legion: aphids and lady bugs and caterpillars. And nowadays, in addition to the ex- citement of being a contender in this most ancient of war games, you have scores of political and ideological questions to deal with as well. Should you use any pesticides at all? How green — and, more to the point, how effective — are the so-called organic alternatives? Is your fertilizer chemical-free? What kind of composter should you use? Or, better yet, which combination of composters? 464 There is just enough tension involved to keep you focused, but not so much that you're going to get the shakes. 99 We are a meek-looking lot, | admit. How un-macho can you get, bent over with a watering can, trying to keep a cluster of squash in the intense-growth mode? Yet there is indeed a wild and crazy side to gardening. I object to the image of us gardeners as wimps out there shuffling tulips around. We are out there, in fact, for a variety of manly reasons. Therapy, for instance. I find 1 can avoid nervous breakdowns by going out to the garden and con- centrating on my pumpkins. It’s a great way to deal with stress. You have to focus on the here and now, otherwise you'll never thread the tip of that scarlet run- ner bean vine through the netting. In this regard, gardening is of course no different than any other hobby: a way to shake yourself free of all the mental and emo- tional baggage accumulated in the course of the day. There is just enough tension in- volved to keep you focused, but not so much that you're going to get the shakes. I mean, it matters enormously if the radishes aren’t ~ thinned properly (because then you’re going to get thin radishes), but you know you'll survive. There’s always the supermarket. I can get reasonably upset if the peas go yellow on me. But it’s not the sort of thing where | think about calling my lawyer or writing a letter to iny MP. Keep in mind that gardeners operate within definite intellectual and political limits. There‘s not much you're going to achieve in the garden that will aftect the course of history, unless it is to discover a new kind of potato that Gardening is essentially a soli- tary undertaking. Or maybe it’s just me. But a greal deal of the magic of gardening stems (if you'll excuse the expression) from the fact that it is something | do solitarily. It is not just that it is down- time in the brain department. It is also very definitely alone-time. You can’t talk to plants and peo- ple at the same time. Whoops! Did | admit talking to my plants? It’s not talking, actu- ally. But as the plants grow some of them do become almost friends, notwithstanding the fact that you have ripped their buddies screaming from the ground, and fully intend to sink your teeth into the poor thing’s delicious little body. The truth is, at bottom, under the guise of being peaceful, hun- ched-over hobby farmers, we gardeners are mass plant murderers. We thin pitilessly. We play God with the destinies of let- tuce and cucumbers alike. I rationalize it all, of course. Being eaten by me is a zucchini’s way of becoming me. Wonderful as life must be down there in the garden vegetating, it is bound to be more exotic viewed through my eyes, listened to through my ears. Having hands would be a real bonus from the point of view of a former spinach. What carrot in its right might would pass on a chance to be part of a free-ranging land mammal at the top of the food chain? 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