Your English Cukes and Watermelon Radishes Are Making Me Ill

I feel bad about so many stupid things.

In distressing news, I haven’t planted a garden this year and your beautiful bounty is making me miserable.

I finally moved into my shipping container house, the one that took me four harrowing years of crying, gnawing, and thrashing to finish. It’s sitting on two glorious acres of land that are supposed to be crawling with squash vines and those awful little bastards of bugs that you have to pick off every morning so they don’t kill the whole damn crop. I ought to be eating fresh leafy greens, rinsing them in my oversized apron-front sink while I twirl around the kitchen, humming like Snow-Fucking-White. There should be muck boots sitting outside my front door next to a five-gallon bucket, dirt stuck to the bottom from the last harvest. I’m best on my hands and knees, clearing out the weeds to make way for the miracle.

I just haven’t gotten to it.

Every time I open this app, or any other one for that matter, I see proof that other people did get to it. They flaunt their Little Gem and their Sungolds (how the hell do they have Sungolds already?) and I sink deeper into my garden guilt. This is my thing, the thing that I started back in 2020, newly sober, and swore I’d do every year for the rest of my life. It’s a sacred ritual; the sowing, the watering, the waiting, then the revelation.

I miss the agony of waking up to see that those godforsaken Hornworms had taken out a whole row of San Marzanos and cursing the little green fuckers as I hunt them down over on the Romas. I miss the brilliance of dew covered lettuces at sunrise, the dampness left on my hand when I run it gently over the new growth.

Have you ever pulled up a handful of rainbow carrots? Felt the rush of not knowing whether you’ll be revealing yellow or orange or deep burgundy? Heavens! The thrill of seeing those first sprouts on the cucumber mounds, as if overnight they all got together and agreed, it’s time.

Gardening is the perfect hobby.

It’s physical. Digging and weeding, hauling off buckets of trash-grass to the compost heap leaves one sweaty and sticky with sunscreen, mud, and flower flies. Oh how I miss my gardening arms, tanned and toned and scratched up from the blackberry bush.

It’s metaphorical. Talk about a writer’s dream; if you can’t find an interesting analogy for birth or death or war in the garden then someone needs to confiscate your laptop.

It’s spiritual. My God. What better example of faith exists? We get on our knees, place a seed into the dirt, water the dirt, and believe that dirt will make way for new life to grow.

So, why haven’t I gotten to it? Hell, I don’t know.

I have my excuses of course: this thing and that thing need to be done to the house before I invest the necessary time and money to do it proper, I’m traveling a lot and it would just shrivel up while I’m away, and I haven’t even prepared the soil—I don’t know for sure a garden would thrive there. Still, your English cukes and watermelon radishes are making me ill.

I scroll through the photos and feel a pang in my heart as if I’m looking at my husband posing next to an old flame. I’m a bitter, scorned lover, stalking your organic roughage. I watch like a deranged psychopath, peering over your shoulder, judging your choice of companion plant for your aubergine. (It’s Marigolds, it’s always Marigolds.)

I feel bad about so many stupid things. I compare today me to yesterday me and convince myself that yesterday me really had her shit together; somehow, overnight, she’s let herself go. I get lost in this grief for the me from before, forgetting that this version will be mourned tomorrow and I should recognize how magnificent she is now.

I guess I’ve been planting other things this year. I’ve watered, devotedly. So—I wait. The revelation will come.

Until then, I’ll just keep turning over the metaphor and ogling your Iceberg. Honestly, you’ve outdone yourself. It’s superb.

Back when I had my shit together and yard full of miracles. (2020)