FROM THE GARDEN
FEBRUARY
Every gardener has that day when he wonders if it "is all worth it?". Perhaps it's the aching muscles following a day of preparing the soil and turning compost that initiates this thought. Or a conversation with a friend who in an off hand comment states that the time you spent in the garden could be better spent making some $'s at a part time job, or recreating somewhere.
Then there's always the pragmatist who adds up all the hours of labor involved in seeding, planting, cultivating, nurturing and finally harvesting a crop, converts those hours into $'s and then tells you how much cheaper it is to simply buy at the market. Perhaps it's the late frost that caught you unaware or the beetles that ate your prize roses that makes you throw up your hands to the heavens and wonder "is it all worth it?".
It happened to me just this past month. While staring out upon the garden, the raised beds merely shapes under two feet of snow, I was taken by a wave of melancholy so sudden I sought out the nearest chair. Before long I was wondering if the path I chose was worth it? What caused me to feel like this? Did I regret losing time for recreating? No. Was I keeping a garden to save money on groceries? Certainly not. Was I discouraged over losing a crop? No. If I didn't have failures, how else would I learn?
You're getting older, I told myself. You're not as strong as you used to be. The muscles ache more and more every year. It's only going to get worse in years to come.
Then I thought about my father's garden. He talked about reducing the size of his garden for years, but it didn't happen. He'd say that he "won't keep much of a garden this year", but I knew it would be just as large. He'd curse the spring mud 'cause he couldn't plant yet, and he'd brush the snow off the escarole before he cut it just as he did for decades.
Then I realized that I, like my father, would never weary of keeping a garden.
There's that bonding of the human spirit with the spirit of the earth that takes place when keeping a garden that no amount of bodily discomfort can diminish. It is, in fact, the labor itself that satisfies. The kind of labor that at the end of the day you can look upon, see what you accomplished and feel like a good husband to the earth.
Is it all worth it? You bet. In fact, for me, it's essential. This whole while, it was just February making me feel funky.
Below is an excerpt from the Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran, who speaks to my heart.
...Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.
...Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.