Gardening seems like a placid, peaceful activity, conjuring up images of smiling older folks with wide straw hats and glasses of lemonade, holding baskets of flowers they leisurely picked that afternoon while hummingbirds sat on their shoulders and ladybugs landed on their hats.  But there's a shadow side to gardening, what I'd call Angry Gardening. Angry Gardening happens when you're faced with deadlines and attempting perfection. 

My partner Bo and I knew we were stretching a bit when we agreed to be in the Magnolia Green Garden Tour, but we just couldn't say no.  How could we deny our front yard veggies the chance to become local celebrities?  We said yes despite our full time jobs and being gone most weekends in the San Juans.  We said yes in February when the future labor was more distant.  Clearly, the garden committee had a keen sense timing.

This morning Bo and I found ourselves stomping around the yard trying to agree on where to begin - should Bo finish building the compost bin, should we borrow a truck to get rid of those branches that are too big to compost, should we weed the front yard vegetable beds or the backyard natives?  Why didn't he finish the composting project earlier? Why did I commit us to the garden tour? How did 6000 square feet become so huge and so daunting?  How did gardening become angry? The same way work or social engagements become angry - not enough time (or money) and unrealistic expectations.  

This time of year I would love to take a sabbatical from my office job and spend every day in the garden living some kind of wide-brimmed-hat-lady-bug ideal, but I cannot.  How else would we pay for all of this gardening space and these plants.  Those people who tell you that it's cheaper to grow your own food, God bless them.  They're liars.  

It's not cost saving that makes gardening worthwhile, it's connection: knowing where your food comes from - seed to plate.  But it's hard to have this contemplate connection when you're Angry Gardening. 

I read recently (where I cannot remember, but probably Thomas Berry) that one of the reasons our species has pursued such an environmentally destructive path is that we've tried to get past some of the basic, hard facts of our existence.  We've used fossil fuels to make it easier for us to grow our food and heat our shelters. Those folks, like myself, who now push simpler living are doing so from a place of relative ease.  I am growing my own food, but from a place of comfort and safety - my corporate job will allow me Whole Foods even if my harvest does not.  I'm supplementing my meals, not harvesting them.

It's not just a matter of time. After all, I've got two days of sunshine to fill, but still managed to spend the first part of one in a grumpy mood.  My tension comes from the same place as my desire to lose five pounds: unrealistic expectations, or if I'm more honest, vanity.

The other day at lunch my coworker was discussing her dieting efforts and I mentioned that I was trying to lose a little weight. I currently weigh 160 pounds. I thought she was going to throttle me.  I laughed it off with comments about being a Gay man and keeping up with the Gay Jones, but she wasn't buying it and I wish I wasn't either.  Washboard abs are not a realistic expectation for a man in his mid thirties with a full time job and a taste for good food and wine.   I've got so much already.  My coworker's icy look confirmed it - I'm being vain. 

Vanity is at the heart of my Angry Gardening. Already our garden is so abundant: this weekend alone providing fresh spinach, arugula, onions, garlic, sugar snap peas, strawberries.  Still, Bo and I find ourselves fretting over the sheer volume of weeds, over wood that needs moving from one stack to another, over extra rainbarrels we haven't purchased yet, crops that won't sprout.  How many garden crunches must we do before we've attained tour-worthy abs?

I suppose we could try to be more at peace with the things left undone. Instead head out with friends, garden tour be damned - embrace our inner hedonist.  Or maybe we could take a heavier dose of protestant work ethic, put in the extra hours and set a good example of produce for our neighbors. But I think the answer lies between perfection and total abandon.   I'd rather find that place of maximum creative output we can reasonably, and happily, sustain. 

If gardening is a working metaphor for sustainability, it works by creating that balance where our labor fills us up spiritually and physically, perfection in the connection, not in spotless tomatoes.  If organic gardening teaches us noting else, we learn that it takes chemicals or hired labor to outpace nature, to keep down the "volunteers" that so happily fill every bit of exposed earth.  Without the help of fossil fuels we are left to act out an earlier story, one where our ancestors worked hard to feed themselves and their communities, not for some kind of Arcadian perfection, but for sustenance.

So I will head back into the garden, after the respite of this writing break. If you happen to visit our house on the garden tour, you will surely see weeds and things left undone, but hopefully you will also see a loving couple taking joy in sharing the fruits of their labor, and not two stressed out angry men fretting over dandelions.

Note: Magnolia Green Garden Tour tickets can be found at Magnolia Book store.

        

 

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