Green revolution

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.