Back
in July I had a strange dream.
There
were many segments and cameos, but the part that seemed to matter the most was the
time I was spending with Marky Ramone. We were listening to My Chemical Romance
and looking over our tomato plants, and they weren't doing well - turning soft
before ripening fully.
I
had in fact been worried about my waking life tomato plants, and some plants in
my garden may or may not have been named after My Chemical Romance members.
Marky Ramone is of course strongly associated with punk, and while there are
certainly punk bands that are more associated with the Do It Yourself ethos
than the Ramones, gardening with a punk rock icon is kind of appropriate.
Those
are just details. The part that stuck with me is that while we were worrying
about the tomatoes I looked at Marky and said "Just planting a garden can
be an act of revolution!" And he smiled at me because he knew I was right.
It
sounds more earnest and naive than I generally feel, but there are going to be
some ways in which we think of revolution differently before we are done with
this, and sometimes the steps are small.
I
garden because fresh fruits and vegetables are important. They are also
expensive. I garden because the breeds that you can grow at home can be bred
for flavor instead of durability in shipping. I garden because there is an
excitement to seeing food come out of the earth.
Sometimes
it's a gamble. I have had bad luck with pumpkins and only one of my tomato
plants is being really productive this year, but then I learn things and get
better at it and expand.
That
may not be Ramones-grade revolutionary, but it is starting to feel more so all
the time.
There
are two different angles from which I am looking at gardening as a revolutionary
activity, and those will be the Tuesday and Wednesday posts, but the other
lesson I will take from my dream self is that unsuccessful attempts are still
attempts.
We
can try to make changes that are very important and fail. Because the cause is
so important, the failure hurts. It's still better than not trying. There are
probably still lessons in the attempt that will make the next attempt better.
I
know things that I will do differently for the garden next year. I am sure the
next year will have even more mistakes. Onward anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment