Drop the Shovel and Back Away Slowly

When you’re addicted to something it’s a good thing to stay away from it.  Keep the door shut.  You open it just a crack, thinking you can use the same amount of force to shut it back up again.  You’re wrong.  When you’re addicted, you’re fighting a tsunami.

This is the way I am about gardening.  I have to shut my eyes sometimes, walking up to the front door.  I can spend hours staring and scheming while standing at my driveway.  I have a healthy imagination when it comes to things involving dirt.  I have a dirty mind, but not in that way.

My Mom and Grandma were and are obsessive gardeners.   In our family, the females were outside digging and the males were inside playing video games or playing the stock market, depending on their maturity level.  I grew up thinking yard work was “women’s work.”  It was no different than doing laundry and errands or baking cakes.

We weren’t baking too many cakes.  Lots of cookies, but no cakes: cookies are easy.  Cookies and iced tea are a welcome break when you’re out in the garden for ten hours straight.  A few breaks and soon you find yourself gardening by moonlight.  I’m not the only one who loses track of days gardening.

My Mom had lots of guests at her house.  She invites people over to give herself a deadline.  “Otherwise I’d never clean the house,” she says.  Her house is clean inside all the time.  Why wouldn’t it be?  She’s never there.  She’s over seventy and she’s in the garden ten hours a day, probably only stopping for cookies and iced tea.

When she knows people are planning to stop by, she works even harder.  “They probably won’t even notice,” she says, “but I wanted to get the vegetables looking nice.”  It’s hot, she lives on a hilly acre with almost no lawn, and just looking at all the work would make a normal person tired.  She just gets up earlier. 

My Grandma was the exact same way, even into her 90’s.  Every visit to her house would start with a tour of the garden.  I swear she named her favorites.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she talked baby talk to them when nobody was looking.

Both my sisters are the same way.  They’ll call me up to tell me what they planted.  My younger sister not only gardens, but moves big rocks and flattens hills into manageable beds.  All three of us have probably reclaimed over a dozen acres of juniper-covered suburban jungle between us. 

It’s something we’ve done since we were old enough to walk.  My Grandpa took pictures of me when I was barely one year old, carrying dirt clods back and forth in the garden.   It starts young in my family.

Knowing my hereditary obsession, I keep the door closed on gardening as long as possible.  Once I start, I can’t stop until the house is sold.  I keep telling myself, “Every dollar spent between the curb and the front door pays back double.”  It’s my curb appeal mantra and justification for all the plants I just have to buy.

This is fine with Charlie.  He does better when he keeps his messes contained within four walls and a roof.  Anything I do outside is fine with him and since he doesn’t have to do it, it’s even better.  He’ll come out and ask if he can pick-ax or dig a hole.  Sometimes I let him.  He doesn’t last long.  “This is hard,” he says.  “I’m tired.  I’m going back inside.”

The neighbor next door is a gardener.  He isn’t living in a fixer, as we are, so he’s able to spend as much time as he wants in the dirt.  He’s retired, so he spends a lot of time outside.  It shows.  He doesn’t give me a tour when I stop by, but he does fill my arms with flowers when I leave.

He assumes gardening is a man’s job.  “Has Charlie got you doing all his work?” he asks.

“In my family, men weren’t allowed in the dirt.”

“What does that make me?”

“Not related,” I say.

Yesterday I had the skateboarders working outside.  I figured I could pay them to do the icky work, digging out the drainage by the front of the house, and I’d keep the door shut.  I’ve still got a painting obsession and I’m sure there’s a bare wall left somewhere in the house.

Then when Evan, the oldest, totaled his hour and five minutes-old Jetta after working so hard to earn it, I thought I’d join the skateboarders out in the dirt.  For therapy, I told myself.

That opened the door.  I was forced out of garden to take Evan home from the airport, then forced out again to go see how Charlie’s daughter is doing since arriving in Eugene.  Otherwise, I’ve lived and breathed outside.  I’ve had nights were I couldn’t go to sleep, thinking about what I was going to do outside when I got up.

You can lose days out there, just like you can lose days with other addictions.  At least gardening is legal and the only painful after-effects are calloused hands and a sore back.  With all the addictions swimming around in my gene pool, I’m lucky to have conquered all except this one.

I think my daughter’s gardening gene has been successfully drowned.  She’s obsessive, primarily when it comes to shopping, friends, or telling us what to do.  She tells me, “I need to earn some money so I’ll work in the garden today.”

I set her up far from the dirt-shoveling skateboarders.  I figured she could start easy, planting some of my cheap $2 trees.  I put big rocks where I wanted the trees to go.  She didn’t even ask what to do next.  She found the planting mix, the shovel and gloves, and began right away. 

I watched her – she knew exactly what to do.  I felt proud.  She’s my only daughter, my only fellow female in the garden.  She’d better know what to do.

She stayed clear of me as I was enjoying my time with the pick-ax.  You can get a good rhythm going while pounding away at the compacted and neglected dirt.  It’s not unlike the rhythm Charlie seems to enjoy while plunging the toilet.

After a little while, she stops planting trees.  She waits for a break between my poundings and yells, “I only need $5 so I’m stopping.  Take me to my friend’s house.  I need to lie out and rest.”  Apparently she hasn’t lost track of time.

“Have your brother take you,” I say.  “My shoes are dirty.”

“I don’t want to take you,” the skateboarder says.  “I’m busy.”  With that he steals my pick-ax and starts hammering on his own patch of neglected dirt.

“Hey,” I say, and steal his shovel.  He was using my favorite shovel.  Doesn’t everyone have a favorite shovel?  I know I’ve heard my Mom talk baby talk to hers.

“Hey, yourself,” he says.  I’ve never seen him exert this much energy, except for when he’s skateboarding, and that doesn’t count.  Nobody’s making him do that.  I thought this gardening gene was sex-specific.

The non-gardening daughter stares at us.  “Somebody drive me,” she says eventually.  “Now.”

I want to get in as much shoveling as possible until the skateboarder takes back the good shovel.  He seems to be doing the same with my pick-ax.  This is one good thing about not having enough tools.  When you have possession of a particularly coveted tool, you use it for longer than you would have otherwise.

The next time I look up, I see Charlie heading to the car with the demanding daughter.  She was smart to give up; it could have been hours.  Addicts are all alike.

A little help? [] 2:10:18 PM