What has been my “handmind” activity during “Covidtide”? Baking, perhaps. Making homemade shrubs and hummus. Writing in my notebook.
But I think it has been gardening. Or, at least, watering the plants. (And harvesting the fruit.)
I love the ritual of watering the potted plants and turning the sprinkler on in the raised bed. I love when water squirts inadvertently on my legs and feet, soaking my Birkenstock’s. I love feeling the weather: heat, humidity, breeze, leftover rain, morning dew. I love lifting the big watering can, swelling with hose-water, and pouring its contents over the thirsty leaves until their pots overflow. I love the way the tomatoes smell after they’ve had their drink.
I love the short walk from the kitchen’s sliding door, down the steps of the deck, across the well-trod brown grass — a path I have beaten over these many weeks — around the garden and to the hose. I love that I once saw a squirrel sleeping in the long grass under the spigot. I love that I’ve seen garter snakes and rabbits and dragonflies (and damselflies). I love searching for fresh pea pods amongst the tangle of leaves and stalks that have been their home and their mother. I love eating just one fresh cherry tomato from the vine as I gather handfuls to bring in the house. I love watching the cucumber plants flower, counting the yellow buds and dwelling on the small fruit that have begun to fill out and grow — one end deep green, with white prickles bursting forth all along the length of it — willing each small cucumber to reach maturity, like a mother watching over her children. I even love seeing our almost-ripe strawberries disappear overnight, nibbled and devoured by hungry chipmunks. Someone else is being fed by our garden. I love that too.
Even when the rabbits (or maybe it was a deer) ate the tops of the Swiss chard, I could only be mad for a day or two, remembering that these creatures have no grocery store or supermarket in which to shop. What mattered was the growing: planting the seeds, watching them sprout, watering them and hoping it was enough, and then waiting — with all the uncertainty that comes with it — until one morning, on my daily pilgrimage to the backyard, the broad red-green leaves had unfurled, strong and bright against the brown dirt, and the chard had flourished: a living thing, guided — at least in part — by the work of my hands.
