Why Garden?

I am wondering tonight as cats and man sleep about the WHY?

I've been reading various books on gardening lately.  They range from literary memoir to "how to" non-fiction.  Some of the writers write about their gardens as a way to create a healthy connection to food and the world for their children, some tell of making a connection to their ancestors with memories of the garden of a beloved grandmother or father.  Some are political:  growing your own food is some small attack on the big food growing corporations.  Some are environmental:  by committing to slow food, you can cut down the environmental impact of the petroleum it takes to get out of season food to your table.  I know people who garden out of financial necessity and people who garden for the meditative nature of it.

I'm not sure why I started gardening.  I had to write a letter to get that 5x12 piece of dirt I now call my garden.  And I wrote my heart out to get it.  I let flow lots of flowery things about the environment, organic food, being a country girl etc.  I knew that it rivaled the best of my English major BS of years gone by....

But, I left out one thing  - too personal to share - although, I'm not sure I still feel the same now which is:  Nature is where I find God.  I haven't had a lot of luck in churches or religious organizations.  I don't really hold the bible up to be much more than a literary recipe about how one, in general, might live ones life.  Yet, I believe in God.  And sometimes when the breeze is just the right temperature and blowing in just the right direction along the skin of your arm, it feels like an embrace from some Higher Power.   So, secretly, this was the reason I wanted that garden plot. 

And in those first few weeks, as I sat in the garden by myself watching the miracles of it in front of me, I thought it was all that I needed.

But, as I planted and harvested, failed and succeeded, battled insects both good and bad, I reported each event to my Squeeze.  He urged me to take pictures, he tried foods he didn't really like just to please me, exclaimed "wow" when I would bring home a haul no matter how big or small - always with that pitch of his voice that makes me weak.  And he didn't laugh at my potatoes the size of a penny which we ate with shrimp forks.  Or at least he laughed with me rather than at me.  Generally, he made me feel proud that each day I cared for and nurtured this little garden plot.

For me, the garden had become about SHARING.  It was my garden for sure, but love had led me to it, to Long Beach.  The Squeeze would visit occasionally to give his bike a hose down or to take an evening walk with me hand-in-hand, to picnic, or just to answer the question for himself, "how does your garden grow?"

What gave me the pleasure, as it turned out, was to share the garden with him; or rather the fruits of my labor.  It had gone from a solitary endeavor between me and God, to one that was about me and him.  I grew things I knew he liked.  I felt proud to share with him the bounty whether in a pie, a stir fry, or included in a Sunday dinner while we watched football in the winter.  I grew vegetables to make him his childhood favorite:  stuffed cabbage.   I tracked down his sister-in-law to pass along his Mom's recipe.  I was feeding my family with the things I had grown.  

But, somewhere a crack has formed and my Squeeze no longer wants to be my Squeeze.  The heartache is beyond words.  In the wake of this announcement, I found myself staring at my garden wondering "why bother".  The joy of sharing the play-by-play had suddenly been stolen from me.  I looked at what was already growing there and felt a loneliness at the thought of harvesting and eating these things by myself. 

And at this very moment I have 8 very, very small cabbages that I have grown from seed begging for life on my windowsill.  I water them, for it would be cruel not to, but they have stunted on me.  They have stopped growing.  I fear they know my hesitation of what I will feel when they are fully grown and ready to be harvested.

Now, in the middle of a heartache, in the middle of the loss of love that I followed to this garden, I don't feel God.  I feel lost.  

There are many decisions to make and the garden will be, no doubt, a piece of it.  What piece, I don't know.  For the moment I am trying to find the lesson in this:

Is it that the garden has taught me that I want to nourish a family?  My family, in whatever form that takes: one man, two cats. 

Or maybe what this is illustrating is that I am so pathetic that I need others to validate me: that I must still learn that growing a cabbage just to grow a cabbage for myself should be satisfying enough.   Can it be both? 

Perhaps it is neither.   But, my beet seeds are soaking tonight so the garden still tugs at me either way.