What a harvest!

 “There’s no boundaries here,” she said while standing among rows of strawberries and leafy greens. “In prison, they’d say, ‘You can’t go over there.’ Nah, here, I feel free. I’m finally free.”  Mercado from the Planting Justice prison gardening program

In the morning I go out to the backyard in my slippers and bathrobe with a mug of coffee to sit with my garden in the cool morning air. Any serious gardener would look at this one raised bed and four tubs of corn and squash and wonder at its meager offerings. Still, this modest harvest requires canning and drying and preserving in sterilized jars. This amount of responsibility is just about as much as I can handle. When the peaches come ripe I make peach jam. Now there is an abundance of tomatoes so I’m drying, canning, and preparing to give these juicy red fruits, plucked in their prime and packed in olive oil, to friends and neighbors come the holidays. Thinking about sharing this bounty on a cold winter day brings feelings of delight in this early morning summer garden. Come the holidays my friends will enjoy this summer garden with me in the form of pasta tossed in rosy red olive oil infused with dried tomatoes- real tomatoes not those mealy market ones- to brighten their winter repast.

Gardens are popping up all over the place-vacant city lots, pots outside apartments, raised beds in front lawns. It’s a revolution of reclaiming our most basic needs from corporations that have not been tender with the land. Small farms bring their goods to farmers markets and people adopt one or two chickens. Programs, such as Planting Justice, bring gardens into places where the green plants can work their magic. Founded in 2009, Planting Justice has installed 550 edible gardens at schools, community centers and homes. They host education programs on gardening for local youth, distribute produce to local residents, give away free fruit smoothies at Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, and source produce for the Good Table, a nearby cafe where diners pay what they can afford. While feeding the community, the garden heals those fortunate enough to tend them. A prison gardener wrote, “What I learned in prison is that if I want to change, if I want to blossom, I need to work on myself and remove unhealthy things from my life. It’s the same as a plant. A plant, if you don’t weed it, if you don’t prune it, if you don’t water it, it’s not going to grow and give fruit.”

The garden wakes up our senses, exposing us to both the dark and the light of whatever the Earth is experiencing. Like any good friend the garden tells us the truth, even when we’d rather not hear it. Nothing speaks so poetically about our abuse of the earth as wilted hydrangeas and withering pear trees. My august garden is telling me there is something wrong with the land. It is bone dry. Unless I water every day the plants wilt and cry out for help. Plants that formerly enjoyed this Mediterranean climate- roses, basil and grapes, are on the edge of extinction. There’s no denying this when I see them suffering in the mid- day sun. Climate change is not a concept but an everyday reality to the Californian gardener.

The dark lives alongside the light, both equally real. Even amid the dark of climate change the garden continues to express its beauty. An artist finds endless inspiration in the garden. The purple eggplant nestled in dark green leaves with magenta veins, orange and green pumpkins descending from meandering vines, butter yellow squash blossoms twisted amongst the low lying basil. The shapes and color variations can be simple or complex depending on your focus. And the garden varies its declaration of the Earth’s wonders each season. In spring the sweet scent of budding fruit trees fills the air as white and pink blossoms float to the ground and tender green shoots rise up from the thawing soil. In summer life is abundant and expansive with red tomatoes, zinnias, sunflowers and tall corn stalks. In fall gourds and purple figs reveal a deep October tone while trees turn orange, red and yellow against a cobalt blue sky. Winter is a stark vision of bare trees black with rain-basic, elemental. There is no end to the visual inspiration a garden offers. And, the visual sense is not the only sense the garden awakens. Nothing compares with the herby aroma of tomato vines or the umami of dark healthy soil or the complex floral sweetness of tea roses. And, of course, there’s taste. The rich sugary taste of a warm tomato strait off the vine is also tart and bright. A garden offers endless sensual delights. It reminds us why being alive is so precious and delightful.

As a garden marks the seasons it offers us a front row seat to the abundance, creativity and generosity of life and connects us to the ground that sustains us. It reminds us to appreciate what we have rather than bemoan what we lack. My garden may not feed the many hungry souls. It won’t even feed just one hungry soul without the supplementation of other growers. But it connects me to the Earth and gives an appreciation of, and respect for, the labor involved in meeting one of our most basic human needs- to sustain the body with food. That basic need becomes beautiful when our senses are open to the preciousness of the life embodied in each plant.

If you would like to learn more about and contribute to Planting Justice please visit them at https://plantingjustice.org/