Learning How to Not Garden

By Jim Long
Published on February 1, 2006
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Over these last 15 years with Herb Companion
I’ve shared with readers my failures and my successes in the
garden. I’ve revealed my most embarrassing moments, related how I
once used herbs and spices from my mother’s kitchen to “can” green
peaches at age 6. I’ve described my first love affair in first
grade and how I made my first lilac perfume for the object of my
affection — who promptly turned down my marriage proposal and
refused to believe I actually had made the lilac extract. I have
even shared how I was reunited with my lost daughters after 25
years, by way of my garden.

I have shared my fears and dreams, and in return, you, dear
readers, have shared parts of your lives with me. As one reader in
Iowa put it when I was speaking at an herb festival there, “I know
more about your childhood and life experiences than I do about my
own husband!” Now I’m entering a new chapter in my gardening life
and I want to share that as well.

I planted my first garden at 5. My parents let me make all of
the many mistakes any 5-year-old could make. Instead of
discouraging me, they bought me child’s size tools, and let me
actually plan and plant my own garden. From that experience I built
a strong foundation and have never stopped gardening since.

Now, with this new chapter, I find that I have to start teaching
myself a new way of gardening. I’m calling it, “learning how to not
garden,” because I have never been without a garden. It’s a
sobering feeling when we reach an age where we realize we have to
slow down. But I don’t know how to keep from gardening!

For many years I have had kidney disease, so much a part of my
genetic inheritance that older members of my family called it, “the
family curse.”

In recent years, better dialysis equipment and kidney
transplants have prolonged lives for those who have this illness.
I’ve finished testing to see if I’m a candidate for a kidney
transplant and soon will be put on the waiting list with 57,000
other people. Until I get a kidney, I’ll undergo daily dialysis.
That means I have to curtail some of my garden work in the coming
year.

But I have to plant, I have to grow things — it’s in my nature.
Still, I don’t have much energy. Tilling a bed is now an enormous
challenge. Preparing one bed takes me hours. I can reduce my number
of garden beds, but does that mean I won’t have so many exotic
herbs and vegetables to show visitors when they come? Will it mean
I totally run out of steam and can’t weed?

I don’t know what the future holds. I will garden as much as I
can, but I need to learn not to garden — an entirely new adventure.
Maybe I will adapt by learning to be more efficient, or to plant
only two kinds of beans instead of eight. Based on everything I
read and hear from those who have had a kidney transplant, I know
that I will return to gardening with plenty of energy and steam
once I have the transplant. For now, though, my garden will get
smaller and I will have to get wiser and faster.


Jim Long gardens and writes from the Ozark Mountains. Reader
comments are always welcome at www.LongCreekHerbs.com and at
Lcherbs@interlinc.net.

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