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January 15, 2008
This year, I have made one New Year’s Resolution. I am terrible at these, having very little willpower and no real desire to develop any in the future. But I think I may be able to follow through with this resolution, if only because my dear husband will be doing most of the work.
And now, without further ado, my Resolution for 2008 is (drumroll please): To plant a garden.
What? That’s not enough for you? Listen, in our family this is ground-breaking news (no pun intended). In our marriage, there are a few specific responsibilities that we have divvied up. I wash – dishes, clothes, etc. – and he puts them away. He deals with trash, I deal with bills. I clean the house, he handles repairs and maintenance. And the one thing I vehemently refuse to get involved in is the yardwork. I hate it – and for good reason. I am a complete and total failure. My thumb is not just black – it has shriveled up and crumbled, like most of my plants.
I want to be a plant person. I want to have a yard filled with all manner of glorious flora – an oasis of scents and colors, everything green and lush and gorgeous. Alas, it is not to be. I cannot keep so much as a windowbox of plants alive. I have spent the last six years on Maui killing every single plant I brought into my home. Every one. Some of the orchids would hang on longer then others (those beauties are tougher then they look!) but for the most part, each of my carefully chosen plants were fried to a crisp in the sun or eaten by bugs or overrun by weeds. Even basil, which I have seen grow to epic proportions in other yards, would shrivel up and peter out eventually under my neglectful eye. By default, I had embraced the “stone garden” style of landscape design – heavy on the gravel and statues. But I wanted to have a yard full of pretty plants and landscaping. And then I was given a small glimmer of hope. I spent an evening at Alii Kula Lavender Farm for a Chamber of Commerce event, and I was inspired to plant lavender in my garden, after hearing about how well it grew in our climate and how little water it needed. Since they were planted, the lavender has not been watered, or weeded, or even really looked at. I hope it is as easy to grow as I was assured it would be. I peeked out at it a few days ago, and the plants were still standing upright; they looked healthy and happy. It was a Christmas miracle.
With that first step accomplished, I feel empowered to continue in my quest to actually complete the task at hand. Lavender – the pretty stuff – is in. Now, it’s time for tomatoes, which I know for a fact my husband can grow. His glorious tomato plants were featured prominently in our wedding photos. They were hard to avoid, all five feet of them. He grows great tomatoes, and I love eating tomatoes. It’s a win-win situation as far as I am concerned. But tomatoes alone do not a garden make. We need something else. Brussel sprouts, maybe. I’ve heard those are hardy. Zucchini? They grew like weeds for my parents; I’m sure we can replicate that success here. We need to start small, with things that are fairly easy to grow with relatively little effort.
So I dug out a pair of ratty jeans, an old t-shirt, and some Crocs – my “gardening clothes” (because every activity needs the right outfit) and I stomped down to Lowe’s, which my son informed me was the best place to get garden stuff. I don’t know how he would know that – as he is seven years old and seems to share my total lack of interest in plants and growing things. But I went down there and wandered the aisles. I started with the gardening accessories. After realizing that the accessories could run me more then a car payment, I settled for some cute gloves and a small spade, tossing them into the cart and continuing on to the nursery. Boy, there were a lot of plants in there, and some of them were so beautiful, but I had to stay on track. Garden. Not beautiful orchids, with their gently arching backs and vaguely obscene blooms. Not the bright and sunshiny bedding plants, or the roses, or the ground cover or the succulents or the tropicals. Fruits and vegetables. I found a few – but they were boring to me and green and leafy in their tiny papery pots, and hard to differentiate. Not very inspiring, that’s for sure. But that was what I was there to get. I decided to keep looking, and as I wandered back through the maze of colors and leaves and blooms and misting water, I was reminded of this song I had memorized as a little girl.
At the age of eight or nine, I was obsessed with this band called Rosenshontz. Now, I use the term
“band” pretty loosely because really it was just two guys – Bill Rosen and Gary Shontz were their names, I believe. They had acoustic guitars and harmonicas, and they sang in harmony and the lyrics were silly and I just thought they were great – they were luminous stars in the world of elementary school entertainment. It was like the Wiggles, but with a sort of Simon and Garfunkel-esque quality. I saw them two or three times during my childhood in New England in the early-mid 1980s, and I still remember the excitement of waiting in the audience for the show to begin. Much like the excitement I was feeling now – the dawn of a new era. The gardening era. I started humming this song that Rosenshontz (and many others, I’m sure) used to sing, called “Inch by Inch”: Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground... We’ll see about that.
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Vanessa Ghantous
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