The experimental Tigger Melon my son planted late last spring has ripened and dropped off the vine. His father picked up the exotic fruit, striped in a zig-zaggy pattern entirely in keeping with its name, and brought it into the house Thursday.
“Look at this,” he announced with a grin. “I think it’s ripe.”
Maybe, but I left the melon on the counter-top, just in case it needed a day or two to reach optimum sweetness. I wanted to be hopeful but that was difficult because I’m struggling with my annual bout of garden underperformitis. That’s not the condition you feel when certain garments get twisted, though the accompanying chagrin is much the same. It’s the sense of rueful disappointment gardeners often suffer when tomato plants yield smallish fruits and the beans give in to rusty disease.
Gardening requires so many things — preparation, patience. Large quantities of compost. You start out just as soon as the snow melts, sow seed, nurture tiny plants, weed, water, brave the summer’s blistering heat, water some more … and what do you end up with? A huge water bill, a handful of beans and a backache. That pretty much sums up my summer.
Tomato-wise, this year wasn’t all that bad; in fact, it proved a bountiful contrast to 2009, when I uprooted most of the vines in disgust after they proved to be stunted and sickly. This summer, we had slicers, salad toppers, salsa components and more. I should be grateful.
Instead, as I have for many years when summer winds down, I struggle with dashed hopes. If it’s not the beans, it’s the basil. If it’s not the basil, it’s the jalapenos. If it’s not the garden, it’s the vacation. If it’s not the vacation, it’s the overall untidy condition of the house. If it’s not the dirty house, it’s the kids who want to sleep till 10 a.m. You see how it goes: you get a picture of how everything will be in your mind and then reality meanders off in an entirely different direction. It can leave a mother downright cranky.
When I was younger, I figured a great solution would be to lower my expectations. This didn’t work for obvious reasons. If you aim for nothing, that’s exactly what you will have at the end of the day. Children are unlikely to vacuum the carpet or hang the laundry on the line if no one tells them to do so. Those of you who think other parents gave birth to children who emerged ready to make their beds and read with perfect diction might be interested in those magic beanstalk seeds that show up in stories.
There’s no magic at my house. So I write lists. I draw up plans. I talk sternly to myself about expectations, disappointment and the fact that even though life is rarely ideal, it must go on.
Accordingly, I designed a chart titled “Domestic Nourishing.” That’s a fancy way to say, “You over there! You’re on the list to wash dishes every Monday night. And you! Get out the recipes and figure out what to cook for dinner Tuesday.” The chart covers all the bases — meal preparation and cleanup, chores, out-of-the-house activities and what must be completed before the gates open and the prisoners are released. Getting it all done revolves around going to bed on time and rising early.
As I added decorative borders to the chart’s grim content, I realized it was not much different from the garden map I designed last February. The neatly pencilled rows and their labels reflected more than an arbitrary choice to put radishes in front and okra on the north end. Some vegetables could tolerate early planting. Others wanted warm soil. The variables involved were complex and sometimes confusing.
The stakes are higher with families. No one will grieve the death of a tomato plant — or at least, the housewife who grieves will only feel temporary sorrow — but the far-reaching consequences of failure to nurture loved ones are much deeper and more painful. I could throw up my hands in disgust and abandon my garden and I could still be a person of character. The same would not be true were I to give up on my family.
I’m fairly certain I am not the only mother who struggles with some variety of post-summer dejection. At the beginning of the season, the three-month stretch of open calendar pages seems vast, promising, packed with glorious possibility. By the end of July, however, the floaties have deflated and the garden’s fresh growth shows signs of heat stress.
Yet just as the forces of temperature, fatigue and dashed hopes converge, it’s time to focus on working hard once again. All over town, much is required of demoralized parents as public school gears up in earnest and we must enforce actual, mandatory wake-up times. There’s no time to mope.
Maybe this is a good thing. I didn’t feel like setting up a chore chart — but I knew it needed to be done. In the process of working it out, I found a small scrap of optimism buried beneath the grouchy debris of my disappointing summer. That’s why the chart ended up with yellow sunbursts pencilled above the days of the week.
Heartened by the hope that had sprouted in my heart, I trooped outdoors to water the garden. I stopped to pull a few weeds and noticed cucumbers to harvest and carrot-tops poking through the dirt. A couple bell peppers in the center row had started to blush, and there was enough basil for a batch of pesto.
So what if the green beans flopped, I told myself. I have a promising-looking melon back in the kitchen to sample. I can’t wait to find out how it tastes. Then I’ll get the house in order and help my children head back to school. Thank goodness summer’s over. I’m ready to move on to the next season.
— August 22, 2010
