A haven of abundance

My garden is my refuge. It is my haven. In one sense, it’s an intrinsic part of my being. So much so that when I took a class on death and dying while in seminary, I included it in the obituary that I had to write about myself.

Writing your own obituary is a difficult exercise and I remember it made me cry, especially the line I included about my garden: “She had a large garden and was generous with her produce.” I reminded staff that I was making good on that obituary writing exercise this past spring when I brought in a basket full of asparagus to divvy up.

I like to give away food.

In years past, I would make a bouquet of vegetables, artfully arranged in small boxes. Sometimes, I make bouquets out of the four different kinds of basil that I grow. Those bouquets are pretty, fragrant, and a great way to have basil at the ready for an evening meal.

These days, I tend toward putting the vegetables into a simple brown paper bag.

This year, we have large yellow tomatoes, grown from seeds that were given to my husband Stephen by Jack Halchak, Sullivan County’s deputy fire coordinator, at a springtime Sullivan 180 Healthiest Fire Department Challenge event at the O&W Rail Trail. It was a humorous interchange to see these two firefighter gardeners hand off an envelope of seeds. And Jack is right: The tomatoes are the biggest that we have ever grown and they are tasty to boot. Because of bird and chipmunk pressure, we pick them when they are just beginning to ripen.

When I go into the garden, I am absorbed by what I see: weeds, bug damage and growing vegetable plants. Right now, some of the plants are stressed by the amount of rain and warm weather we had mid-August. I worry about the eggplant that doesn’t like a lot of water and is shedding shriveled-up leaves. The garden connects us intimately to the natural world: the weather, the rain, the heat and the sunshine.

It also connects us to the unknown. And shows us that we are all participants in an interconnected world.

Following the rain and in anticipation of five days of sunshine, Stephen spent hours cutting off blighted tomato leaves, exposing the fruit to air and light and the mysterious process of ripening. As an aside, I also think the chipmunk can’t climb as easily to get the ripening tomatoes.

In this time of information overload, and an emphasis on news, consumer information, human opinion and proclivities, it’s helpful to go into a natural space. Even if that natural space is one we tend.

It’s a space outside of our control, and outside of our house or our work. It is a space where we are able to feed ourselves—in mind, body and spirit—and to experience something beyond our human condition.

It’s the garden, a living example of a self-sustaining system that we get to help perpetuate and take refuge.

It is a haven of abundance.