Aileen Jeffries

Growing edible plants in Portland is easy, almost sinfully easy, compared to growing food in northern Saskatchewan. It never fails to amaze me that under the first foot of dirt around here there is MORE dirt, not bedrock. Our last average frost date is April 3rd, with a “safe” (read: tomatoes) frost date of April 23rd.

So, this being March, I’m busy getting the garden ready. I’ve already seeded peas and fava beans (delicious with a nice Chianti!). This morning, with Kea’s “help,” I dug a trench for some brown, wizened asparagus roots and tossed them in, ignoring the Internet’s insistence on the importance of manure. Asparagus is a fickle plant and I’ll have to wait until next year, assuming it even takes, to harvest.

There’s not much exciting about a covered-over asparagus trench so I also treated myself to some container assemblage. I love container gardening because the problem set is tightly defined. My two new front-step containers feature Daphne (blooming in the most miserable part of winter with the most heavenly scent), anemones which I love for their vibrant, floppy, almost garish flowers, yarrow (ground cover) and black mondo grass which is swiftly becoming one of my favorites.

In my, shall I say, unusual childhood, we had a huge garden that was the source of most of our food. Row upon row of peas, sugar beets, carrots and squash.

Farming on the Canadian Shield is never easy – the soil is poor and shallow and in no month is it guaranteed not to snow. But while I spent hours and hours of my youth weeding and taking out rocks and digging up potatoes, the worry and responsibility of growing enough food to make it through the winter rested on the squarely shoulders of my parents, not mine. Which is how it should be when you’re six.

Now that I finally have the space and time (this is debatable) to grow my own garden, the stakes are considerably lower. I live just a few blocks from a weekly farmers market. I’m married to someone who distrusts food that doesn’t come wrapped tightly in cellophane and considers iceberg lettuce to be a vegetable (it isn’t, of course, it’s crunchy, pale-green water). We’re so far off from being successful survivalists, we don’t even have a root cellar.
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I’m not sure how this happened, but our garden has become a sort of spider sanctuary.

They are everywhere, usually at the level of my neck. My delicate, exposed, thin-skinned neck. They can probably see the blood coursing through my veins, just below the milky-white surface.

I’ve come to know a few the spiders, if not as friends, certainly acquaintances. There’s Eunice, who is either full with egg sack or just a very successful eater and has made the doorway to the basement her home. Yesterday, I watched her defend her territory against another spider, smaller of body but longer of leg, who wanted to build her web in the same doorway. As I watched, I backed up slightly because Eunice and her adversary were level with my eyes and seemed to be both accomplished jumpers and ferocious biters. It was only as I turned away to head back up the stairs that I noticed I’d backed right into Green Bean Spider’s web. Luckily, she’s a little more timid and chose to flee rather than attack the back of my head.
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My aunt Holly gave me a gift certificate to a garden store but I’ve run out of room for plants until I manage to kill a few so I got a garden Buddha. My purchase decision was based on a design problem, not a desire for spiritual enlightenment. There was a spot in the garden – a pathway to nowhere – that needed a focal point.

Kes wasn’t enthused by my new find. He implied it might fall victim to an unfortunate sledgehammer accident. He posed a corollary, “What if you came home to a giant Jesus statue in the front yard?” I would gripe, he would explain he got it with a gift certificate, I would be forced by his unassailable logic to relent and welcome stone Jesus.

There’s something a little odd about owning a statue of the Enlightened One from a faith to which I do not adhere. Not counting Lisa Simpson (and there are good reasons not to count her; I don’t know her personally, also, a cartoon) I don’t  actually know any Buddhists. Buddhism appeals to me over other religions because I don’t often hear of Buddhists blowing themselves up in order to kill as many members of a competing religion as possible. The little sculpture exudes serenity and complacency. I could swear the corn is growing faster in its presence.

In my quest to become a Gardener, I have a few things going for me. I’m naturally messy. I have no problem with dirt or worms or compost smells. I like to eat, a whole lot, especially fresh produce that grows just a few feet from our door. I’m a designer by profession and training. I recognize the importance of framing views; of considering the foreground, the middle, and the distance in compositions. And I have friends – landscape designer friends – who know the difference between a hosta and a huchera, a hebe and a hellebore.

Of course, I also have a few deficiencies working against me. I’m impatient. I know that one day the deciduous magnolia will arch its sturdy branches over the entire back garden, with a crest of voluptuous pink petals presiding over April. But right now, it is only about 4 feet high. Grow. Faster.

I’m also limited for time. Someday soon, I will be able to put Kea’s small, nimble fingers to work pulling weeds and thinning carrots. For now, her gardening skills are limited to plucking the flowers off my euphorbia one by one and arranging these spoils in a dainty bench pile. So I hurry home from work, hoping to catch a half hour to water the garden before Kea awakens from her happy hour nap.

Gardening inspires the most hackneyed sort of pop philosophy so I’ll avoid opining on the inner peace that comes with tending my little patch of land. Instead, photos!