Cultivate Community

This March, I began container gardens with my mom while she was in town visiting. I’m growing green beans, tomatoes, onions, radishes, garlic, and leeks.

Back home in Southwestern Pennsylvania, I have fond memories of planting spending time in the garden with my grandpa and mom. My Uncle would always come over in the summer waiting for onions to be picked from the garden or for us to make fried tomato sandwiches. I always wanted a garden but was intimidated until my mom encouraged me to try this March 2020. Sundays are my watering days. I wake up early in the morning to water, prune, and check-in on any new growth. I also place black washi tape on all of my plant pots to give them names. I most recently named a string of dolphins Merlin.

Being at home is not terrible but has become very monotonous for all of us. I take moments to repot, water, and feel revived when my hands meet the soil. Gardening has helped immensely and I’m proud to have encouraged so many friends to do the same.

I generally have a small garden but due to Covid and working from home I have a lot more time to spend there and I’m enjoying  making new discoveries daily and also taking the time to really learn better gardening  techniques.  It makes me feel like the earth is still giving back her beauty and abundance.

It is a feeble wee garden, but onions are up and sprouting three inches high so HOPE springs eternal. Can you hear our applause from Central PA?

Along the Red Cedar River near Cameron, WI

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#GRATITUDE

The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh."  - Rumi

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The favorite part of my CoVictory Garden is my herb garden. I love the flavors and freshness of these wonderful plants.

I’m a gardener, artist, teacher, daughter, sister, wife and mom navigating in multicultural living. The practice of “control and letting go” as well as “trial and error” in gardening is in unison with my studio work whether it is calligraphy, painting, building, or digital production. I “find myself” in the garden. The earth grounds, the self-seeded plant (weeds?) educate, the life cycles of wildlife tells time, but the changing behavior of the garden warns of climate change.

Without this garden, I would be a “nomad”. The first thing we did when we moved to our current house 2005 was to dig out concrete pavement and planting beds to return the space to the earth. We believe in the strength of “soft things”. My garden is my backyard. It is in Cambridge, MA, and measures 50’ x 17’. I am a caretaker of 16 species of shrubs and small trees, 25 species perennials and 12 goldfish. Guiding principle in my garden is harmonious diversity achieved by trial and error poly-cultural planting.

The garden is an opportunity for escape from Zoom meetings (for my husband and I) and computer games (for my son), for stretching (for all of us and our dog), and to look far without our sight colliding with a wall. We chat with our neighbors from our garden to theirs.

We started our garden in the middle of March 2020 right after the pandemic hit. We’ve had gardens before but this one seemed more important. We have lots of shade so it’s a puzzle trying to figure where best to plant. We have two raised beds along the driveway and four squished into the very end of our backyard. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t plan well. I planted cucumbers too closely and didn’t think about how big my veg would get. I also didn’t bank on the squash vine borer decimating my squash and zucchini. Oh well, lots of cucumbers with melons and eggplant in the way. We plan on making this a permanent garden and making space in our front yard too.

Grandpa is working hard on his garden, but so far it doesn’t look too good.  Some of the things that are big and bushy are turning yellow and the carrots just can’t seem to get out of the soil.  Grandpa moved the carts into the middle of the back yard, so that may help.  We aren’t the greatest growers. 

Today I am putting flowers in.  I know you can’t eat them but i have a bunch of wave petunias and some teeny, tiny geraniums and I am usually kind of successful with them.