Tilling the Land

Whenever I complained about any form of manual labor, dad was quick to remind me of his own youth, namely the pre-dawn cow-milking.  Recently I had him iterate a favorite anecdote to Liz, regarding the drafty farm house and a glass of water on his nightstand freezing overnight.

During the Lubbock years, a brilliant idea was conceived.  My parents, environmentalists and chronically short of funds in those days, decided that when the lawn was mowed, the grass would be bagged and spread under the rabbit hutches.  Then, over the course of the following week, this drying grass would soak up the all the delightfully nitrogenous excrement that the rabbits produced.  The resultant urine-soaked yard waste would then be shoveled into a wheelbarrow and carted to the alley–dumped upon the compost pile–in time for the next mowing and batch of grass.  This pile would lengthen, requiring that it be watered and turned, until the now saturated mass would breed the necessary microorganisms, expediting the pile’s decomposition.  The conclusion, and omnipresent lesson in decomposition models and the nitrogen cycle, courtesy of dad, was an incredibly nutrient-rich and organic soil for use in the gardens.

And amazing gardens my mom did have.  Yet somehow, I failed to appreciate these lessons at the time.  Through some combination of being a kid and doing hard manual labor in the west Texas heat, the miracles of biology fell flat.  And while I remember my sisters helping with the mowing/shoveling/turning, I don’t recall their involvement nearly as much as my own–something I attribute to being the only son, and the point at which the cow-milking anecdotes would emerge were I to point out these injustices.

But, I did enjoy gardening, so mom indulged me with a section of the garden for my very own.  And while there was many a discussion on what I couldn’t plant in it, the joy of having one’s own child willingly involve themselves in a parent’s hobby likely superseded the irritations of teaching me basic gardening.

So it was that I indulged my daughter when she asked me recently for her own garden.  The proud parent within immediately agreed and started working on her very own partition.  I selected a full-sun and rather barren section of the yard, near my own vegetable garden.  After some digging and hauling of recycled bricks (retrieved elsewhere from the yard), I bestowed upon her a section of earth, prime for cultivation.  Unlike my own parents, however, I forked over a few bucks and filled it with a commercial potting soil, since we lack rabbits.

The whippet approves

Then it was off to Lowe’s.  I don’t know who Lowe was, but I’m guessing the patron saint of suburbia.  Hail, St. Lowe!  Feeling my mother’s pain, I tried my best to remain silent as we accumulated a cartfull of mismatched plants.  Ultimately though, this is a lesson in gardening, which will require some failure.  Still, it turned out well, and complete with lawn decoration, represents a utopian model of suburban flora.

I’m in the process of planting clover in that unkempt section

I do still have her pick up the dog poo, and even though it doesn’t go into compost, it sort of counts.

–Simon