Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

At one with the earth

By G.D. Maxwell There are at least two fundamental problems with gardening. The first is, it’s an obscene amount of work, way more sweat and toil than anything generally referred to as a pastime or hobby has a right to be.

By G.D. Maxwell

There are at least two fundamental problems with gardening. The first is, it’s an obscene amount of work, way more sweat and toil than anything generally referred to as a pastime or hobby has a right to be.

The second problem is almost a punchline. After having expended enough labour to build a small house, suffered enough cuts and scrapes to make people wonder whether you might not be hurting yourself intentionally in some bizarre cry for help, scrubbed enough dirt from under your nails to fill another raised bed – no, not another bed; make it go away mommy – gotten sunburned, bugstung, heatstroked and paranoid over whether the damn thing would grow, after all that and more, you might end up with a bountiful harvest. Just when onions are 29 cents a pound down at the Bag ’n’ Save and all your neighbours are trying to give away the same stuff you’re trying to eat before it goes bad.

Weird.

I am, however, a reluctant gardener. Undoubtedly several more years of intense therapy might shed some light on why but it would probably take more years than I have left to actually effect a cure.

There are, as I write, neat rows of green and purple and chartreuse stuff growing out of rich, black dirt outside my window. There is an island of rhubarb the size of a small car, a phalanx of peas about to grow up – and quite possibly pull down – their chickenwire trellis, a forest of raspberry canes growing shaggy with leaves, onions, strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, leeks and beans progressing toward delight or disappointment. And a gang of thuglike crows just biding their time in the compost bin, waiting for something better, fresher, more tender to pillage.

Disaster lurks around every corner.

Gardening is dangerous. In my life, I’ve played competitive sports, ridden and fallen off motorcycles, climbed sheer rock faces, protested in the faces of dimwitted, heavily-armed police I was royally pissing off, driven way too fast on twisty roads and way too slow on Toronto’s 401 at rush hour, eaten midway food at the PNE, and told Chris Kent I thought ski racing was a stupid waste of time. The only time I’ve ever undergone "emergency" surgery involved a gardening accident. I kid you not.

Consider that in a recent survey, 40 per cent of US doctors admitted to gardening. You may think this is a pretty impressive number; I think it’s so small because they know how dangerous gardening can be. Almost 40 per cent of them admit to still smoking for chrissakes. And it pales in comparison to the 100 per cent of B.C. docs who think Gordon Campbell’s scorched-earth Medicare policies are the work of a man sorely in need of a brain transplant.

But admittedly, there is something soothing about gardening. It’s called exhaustion. I get incensed when I see books or articles touting Lazy Gardening or explaining how to become a lazy gardener. The two words in such close proximity suggest either a total lie or describe my friend Greg. Greg had a beautiful century home in Toronto and a "cottage" on Georgian Bay one could rightfully call an estate. As far as I could tell, the only gardening chore Greg ever performed was writing sizable cheques to the people who provided untold man-years of stoop labour – a term having little to do with physical posture – in his gardens.

Generally, though, it’s helpful to never, ever, under any circumstance, pick up any magazine having anything whatsoever to do with gardening. Gardening magazines combine the worst features of both porn and – excuse me for any perceived political incorrectness – women’s magazines. Their glossy pictures of perfectly magnificent gardens are designed to do two things and they do those things very well. First they will make you feel inadequate and hopeless about your own gardening efforts in much the same way Cosmo will make any normal woman question the adequacy of her lips, breasts, thighs, tummy, eyes, boyfriend and life in general. Then they will offer you a dizzying array of products to overcome those inadequacies. They should all be burned.

Or composted. Compost is the bright light of gardening. Compost is almost a guy thing. Messy, trashy, disorganized and largely left to moulder on its own, compost appeals to the mudpie-makin’ kid in all of us. Got garbage? Toss it on the compost pile. Old newspapers? Compost. Roadkill? Okay, so not everything winds up in the compost bin but it does make life a little bit easier and lays the foundation for segueing into an eccentric life marked by rusting old cars in the back yard and a creaking attic full of really good "stuff."

At the moment, our garden is organic. That is to say, shitty. Aside from the hopeless clay soil of the Cariboo, our future salads are growing in a delightful blend of excrement from varied farm animals, most notably sheep. I do not know if our garden is organic because we are committed to the idea – my Perfect Partner is the gardener; I just do what I’m told – or because it is too early in the game for the puny sprouts to have drawn the attention of ravenous beasts.

The only ravenous beasts in the garden thus far have been mosquitoes and teeny little black flies. Both are carnivores and we have been the main course. I can assure you I would not qualify as organic at this point, having doused enough Muskol on myself to pass out from the fumes but not quite enough to keep the damn things from finding the one or two square centimetres I missed and transfusing enough of my blood into them to make an audible SQUISH when I finally realize they're there.

Despite my reservations, and let me assure you they are bountiful, I fear this foray is just the thin edge of the wedge. This is, at least, food gardening. There is a tangible – if ephemeral – reward if all goes well against long odds. Less tangible is the progression to growing flowers, plants designed to lure birds and butterflies, wildlife gardens – salt licks? – and, I’m certain, the zenlike mysteries of inner gardening. Be one with the mulch, Grasshopper.

In the meantime, there are weeds to control, feedings to be administered, vines to be trained, suckers to be pruned, and... what’s this. Worms having sex. Fascinating and disturbingly arousing.

Oh no. What’s happening to me? Help me. Help me.