Beltane Waxing Last Frost Moon
Gardening commends itself in several ways, but two are most important to me. Having life tuned to the seasonal and daily rhythms of heat, light, rain, snow, even frost like we have predicted for tonight, grounds me. If the frost comes and I have nothing outside to protect, it is a passing phenomenon of little interest. With delicate plants to protect I know what it means, cold enough to cause ice crystals inside plant cells to burst. Likewise drought is of no notice to me if I live in a condominium or on a city lot where my grass and a tree or two are my only contact with the plant world. With a vegetable garden, though, the plants dry up, don’t produce. I have to consider the drought, see that my plants get adequate water.
When the rains come, followed by warming days and the seeds leap up through the soil, when the potato eyes push a stalk and early leaves through to the surface, when those leeks nurtured since early April stand up and begin to fatten, it matters to me. Their work, much like the bees, comes from their essence, not from anything I do, but, also like the bees, I have a role, to protect them, to see they have what they need. We work together, the vegetables, the fruit trees, the currant and gooseberries bushes and the bee colonies.
The food that comes from our garden does not see us through the winter, though some of our crops, like potatoes and garlic for example last that long, but eating close to the land, lower down the food chain, happens more naturally when some substantial part of the diet comes from home. So, the food alone serves as a final link to the growing process, but as a present symbol of the food available in the vegetable world, it paints into our world color that needs to be at our table all year round.
This, then, has come to pass as my new faith, a link with the earth and its fruits, a role in caring for them and the constant reminder of our dependency, our interdependency on it all. When I began to work with the Sierra Club three plus years ago, I did it to put my political experience to work on behalf of the living world, in part at least as a thank offering for the sustenance I have received from it all these many years.
