Egg cartons, dirt, seeds and mosquitoes.
I finally planted seeds indoors yesterday in preparation for spring. Spring in Eastern Ontario is a long time coming. I am about eight weeks late. I planted anyway. My freshly cleaned boot tray, egg cartons, a bag of dirt and six packages of seeds consumed a third of our kitchen table for at least the last two weeks, in anticipation of the half hour I would need to put those seeds into the dirt. Last winter I read that certain plants keep mosquitoes away. Who wouldn’t want to keep those pests at the edge of your lawn? Fly up and down the street mosquitoes, but stay away from me. So…I designated two flower pots to plant mosquito repellent plants. Their job will be to guard our patio. Though mosquitoes are great bat food, I do not enjoy being their food. The deed is done and now I wait for results. I wonder if our cats will play in the dirt before the plants poke through. I wonder if the seeds will sprout or if I will remember to water them. Lots of things for me to wonder about.
I reminisce about childhood seed planting. I remember the excitement I experienced the day the Dam Seed box arrived at our house. A brown cardboard box full of seeds. Our seeds always came by box. We had a huge garden to plant and tend to. The garden fed my family of nine kids and two parents. I remember preparing the potatoes for planting. Old little wrinkled up potatoes, with sprouts growing out of them left over from winter. I had to cut them in four and was reminded to make sure that each piece had an eye. You know that divot in the potato where the sprout grows from when they have sat in your cupboard too long. If memory serves me correctly at least a quarter of the garden was potatoes. I did not dig holes for the potatoes, I was assigned to dropping the pieces in the hole, covering them with dirt. Then we waited. The shoots appeared and as they matured…. Voila…. potato bugs. Nasty striped little beasts that would consume the leaves killing the plant. Sometimes an older member would spread a white flour like powder on the leaves (I have no idea what it was) and at other times I was tasked with squishing the bugs between my small fingers. The bugs smelled and left my fingers stained red. I can still hear the pop the bugs made when I squished them. Seems gross to me now, but it was part of country life in the fifties and sixties. I think I would still be able to squish those bugs once I got over my initial…. yuck.
We worked and we played in the hot sun in that garden. Lots of brothers and sisters to play and fight with. Hot days meant water fights and swimming in the algae, slimed cow tank. Our cow tank was a large metal oblong receptacle that stood about three feet high fitted with a stabilizing metal bar across the centre. In the sweaty, hot days of summer I would swing my little bare leg over the side, sliding across the slippery algae covered bottom in my bare feet. Then I would grab the centre bar, hold my breath and swing under the bar from one side to the other. Laughing and so much cooler. I can still imagine the feel of the slimy green algae between my toes.
The seeds and garden were important components of our lives. It meant having food and not having food. I didn’t realize this as a child. The garden was just a part of my life’s rhythm. I was too young to understand how close hunger salivated at our door. There were no social safety nets in those days, only ingenuity, perseverance, a helpful community and shit ass luck. What and how much grew in the garden mattered. We did not have running water or a refrigerator in our house. Our family rented a freezer chest in town, but I have no idea how big it was or what was in it. Only that we had one. Growing and looking after the vegetable garden was a crucial part of our survival.
Potatoes were an important part of survival growing up. Meat, potatoes and vegetables made up most of my childhood meals. Boiled potatoes with meat grease, not gravy. Perhaps not the most exciting of meals, but we ate. In our garden we grew a lot of vegetables. Green beans, French beans, peas, kale, Brussels sprouts, carrots, turnips, beets, lettuce, endive and radishes. Fresh vegetables are delicious. I miss the taste of them.
I remember as a young child sitting with siblings shelling peas, trimming green beans, cutting them into appropriate lengths, filling bowls and bowls. I liked using the red green bean cutting machine. Turning that handle until your arm hurt with the effort. In the background of my memory are my parents and siblings, helping, teaching, sometimes with patience and sometimes with no patience at all. Sometimes laughter and sometimes frustration and sometimes anger, but always being a part of my family community. Lots of siblings means hard knocks but it also means caring, a place to belong. We had each other. I still have each individual one of them and their significant others. My heart is crammed full of love when I consider each one. They were my very first community. We are different from each other. We are not a glob of cloned humanity. We have chosen different ways of doing life and sometimes we scratch up against each other because of those choices. These are uncomfortable places. Underneath the scratching lie strong values. Loyalty, work ethic, helping others, morality, trustworthy, honesty, outspoken (gets us in trouble), love. I began developing my ideas about community with my family when we worked and played in the garden. It is there that I had to learn how to get along with different personalities, how to forgive and be forgiven. How to put into play our family values. I have gotten hung up on my weaknesses over the years too. Struggled to overcome them. In my heart of hearts, I know that my first community, my family is a place I can land even while I struggle. They cannot fix or change me but I sure do feel their love for me. This is a very big gift.
Mee Leven 