Gardening has a different meaning now

These are difficult times for people who like to get outside and for those who feel an obligation to do yard work.

It's cold! A task as simple as walking the dog (one of my primary duties) is more difficult when the temperature drops to near freezing or below and when the north wind suddenly gusts through whatever protective layers you're hiding under. Really cold weather, as we had a couple of weeks ago, when the temperature stayed in the teens and twenties for weeks, is even more trying. Even with gloves on, my fingers went numb. Even with my heaviest coat and layers of clothing underneath, my torso shivered and my exposed nose and cheeks burned. 

I find solace in the assurance that February arrives soon, and it will be time to cut back the liriope (monkey grass) so that spring's new growth will have space. If the weather is warm enough after I raise the lawn mower's deck enough to trim back the liriope without scalping it to ground level, I can also begin helping out with the natural areas and flower gardens, where much maintenance is needed. Winter's die-back leaves a depressing, brittle forest of undergrowth and an absence of healthy, appealing plants and flowers.

Getting the natural areas, the lawn and the planting areas back into shape will take all spring, days of work that end with exhaustion and aches in muscles and joints not accustomed to such bending and exertion. The reward, if we are lucky, will be a yard that is pleasing to the human eye and to butterflies and birds. We will hope to gather flowers and a few vegetables from our labors but not enough sustenance to supply us or even to compensate for the calories we burned in transforming the winter-damaged plants and soil.

Where I grew up, gardening was not a matter of flowers and shrubs and vistas that are pleasing to the eye. Our gardening was about eating. A large garden and work that consumed every day from April to September would supply the vegetables that would feed us all year long. Tomatoes, corn, butterbeans, peas, okra, cucumbers and occasionally other veggies, grew in the garden that stretched a few feet from our home's western wall to our neighbor's property line a few hundred feet away. 

I learned to set a tomato plant in a small hole made by a hoe and filled with a dipper full of water, making sure it was upright and firmly secure. I counted the beans to place in each hole in what would become a row of butterbeans. The same drill prevailed for peas and corn. Okra required a trench slit into the plowed row between the furrows and a flow of tiny seeds. Cucumbers had to be planted in a wider row because its vines would reach out toward other rows of vegetables.

When the plants matured and their seed pods formed, small children (I was second youngest) were taught to judge the ripeness of beans and peas by feeling them with your fingers. The beans or peas should be firm inside the pod. Picked too soon, the immature beans would be too small and difficult to separate from their sleeve. We also learned to shell beans and peas, discovering the pain in your thumb after an hour of shelling. Harvesting okra required use of a sharp knife, and gloves to avoid the irritation of fiberglass-like "fur" on the okra pods. Only older children or adults were allowed to harvest okra.

We ate well through those weeks of harvesting, but the work was not finished. If we were to eat in the winter, the excess harvest would have to be canned or frozen for eating after the garden plants had turned brown. Open shelves in the kitchen quickly filled with quart jars of vegetable soup, tomatoes, corn, beans, peas and cucumber pickles.

I think of those summers 60 years ago as my wife and I settle in to bring our flower beds, shrubs, ground covers, lawn and natural areas back into shape. The flowers are beautiful, the butterflies are delightful and the green landscape is pleasing to the eye. But aesthetics cannot compare to the need, urgency and rewards of a vast vegetable garden in a country setting. 

Relief from heat needs to include rain

The cooler temperatures — all the way down into the 80s — promised for tomorrow will be welcome, but they won't fix the problem that is looming worse than the heat: a lack of rain. The weather radar the past couple of evenings has shown thick, rain-bearing clouds passing to the south of us but little or no rain falling here. A brief shower wet the leaves on trees and lawns but did nothing to replenish the soil.

On a trip through some of the remaining farmland in Wilson County today, I saw green fields of tobacco, corn, cotton and soybeans panting for rain. The local dams I have passed the last few days are not overflowing with water as they had been just weeks earlier, when a plenitude of water had soaked the soil and filled streams to overflowing through most of the spring. But this June we are bidding farewell to on Wednesday has been unseasonably hot not just for a day or two but for days and weeks on end. The "dog days" of summer are upon us already, more than a month too soon.

What these higher temperatures will mean for the summer and fall cannot be known, but many weather watchers are saying this month's heat and the resulting warmer ocean temperatures could mean a large number of especially strong hurricanes. These storms gain strength from warm water, and there seems to be plenty of that this year.

We are only a couple of years removed from one of the worst droughts in this state's memory. Rocky Mount's Tar River Reservoir dipped so low that Rocky Mount made a deal to buy water from Wilson. Raleigh, Durham and other cities began enforcing strict water usage rules. Atlanta's main reservoir turned into a mud puddle, causing near-panic in Georgia. That sort of crisis could return unless this hot, dry spell dissipates and we get some regular, soaking rains. At risk are gardens and lawns and the patience of gardeners who stand guard over their beloved plants but can't control the weather. July and August are usually hot, dry months. If this historical pattern continues this year, by September, we'll be deep in drought and, perhaps, hoping for a hurricane — just a little one — for relief.

Tomatoes are ripening on the window sill

For perhaps the first time in decades, we have tomatoes ripening on the kitchen window sill. The sight of them takes me back to my childhood, to the house where I grew up, where in the summer there were always a few tomatoes sitting on the kitchen window sill, slowly turning from firm, mottled green to bright red and succulent. Those tomatoes came from the backyard garden that was as much a part of the changing of the seasons as the extended daylight or the breath-sucking heat in the pre-air-conditioning South. Tender, young tomato plants would be dropped into small holes made by a hoe in the furrows of plowed ground. A dipper full of water would moisten the soil that would be scrunched up around the tender, green stem. In a month or two, leggy tomato plants would begin bearing their fruit, in a long row between the prickly okra and the butterbeans. The reddening fruit would be laid upon the window sill for final ripening, conveniently accessible whenever someone wanted a sandwich for lunch or a side of vegetables at supper. The extra tomatoes would be scalded, peeled and canned into Mason jars by my mother, providing tomatoes from the garden all winter long.

The three fat tomatoes on my window sill today come from cast-off tomato plants my son and his wife had no room for in their yard, so we found a couple of corners of our flower garden to plant them. Three of the four plants turned out to be cherry tomato plants, and I've gathered handfuls several times to garnish a simple salad. The fourth plant has borne heavy, sandwich-size tomatoes that have tended to burst through their skin as they ripened. We took to bringing the tomatoes inside while still green and intact so that they would ripen without bursting. It has worked and, at the same time, has reminded me of the miraculous transformation of fruit from too-green and too-firm to just right without any connection to its source of nutrition or water. Light streaming through the window (not even direct sunlight in this north-facing window) ripens and colors the tomatoes until they are ready to eat, providing one of summer's consummate pleasures — a fresh-from-the-garden tomato sandwich.