I marked the date on my calendar months in advance: March 7, 2020 — Sign Up for Community Garden. My third year as a community gardener would be my breakthrough year, I decided. I burrowed into garden books, vegetable plots and graph sheets to envision the 4x8 garden. I replenished my organic seeds. I sowed hardy seeds in my bay window.
When the sun rose on March 7, I grabbed my checkbook, completed my community gardener application and drove to the public room at the local fire house. The doors opened, and I broke into a smile. These were my peeps, my community of community gardeners. I was home.
I slid into a chair at the registration table, introduced myself to the person sitting across from me, and signed my check with a flourish. At another table I signed up for a required garden team — weeding, fencing, garden health, greenhouse seedlings, composting. With the basics complete, I wandered the room, waving to this gardener, chatting with another, thrilled with how many people I recognized from only two years of community gardening.
-- “What’s new in your plot, Terri?”
-- “Ceci, which vegetables are you going to plant this year?”
-- “Which work team needs my help, Lisa?”
Five days later, coronavirus shut down the world.
Schools closed, theaters shuttered, businesses folded, restaurants locked their doors, travel evaporated, nurseries closed, and streets and skies went empty. At home, I doom-scrolled through news relentlessly, hoping desperately for relief to bad news.
Nature Says Yes in a World of No
Word came two weeks later: Yes, the community garden would open amid the pandemic, but the rules were strict. No one without a mask. No more than six people at once. No fewer than six feet from other gardeners. No group events. No welcome parties. No learning sessions. No compost training. No tomato tasting. No insect classes. Stripped of human interaction, the community garden seemed to become a world of no.
Nature, fortunately, remained a big yes. Buds popped, animals crept out of hiding places, does and fawns nibbled shoots beside fallen branches, and wild turkeys shepherded their poults beneath feather skirts through the fen.
In April I cajoled my husband, PJ, into visiting the garden with me. In the back woods of Cos Cob in Greenwich, Connecticut, I unlocked the garden gate and looked across the expanse of 92 garden plots, all gray, dormant and largely untouched. PJ and I grabbed wheelbarrows (well, PJ did) and began tilling the 4x8 plot. We cleared out weeds and roots, turned over the dirt, added fresh soil and layered in “black gold,” the prized compost material. By the time we left, the plot was ready, the soil rich, and the cold-hardy seeds were neatly sowed in rows.
Normally May, June and July are the months gardeners chat, tell tales of planting, share lessons learned and ooh and aah over vegetables grown and lost. Not this year. In 2020, the chatting normally heard across plots was replaced by silence. Three or four times a week I ventured before sunrise to the garden, seldom seeing other gardeners. Mask over my face, I sweated as I dug and planted rows of arugula, added radishes and beets, trained zucchini and nestled tomato seedlings into the dirt. I wandered the empty garden conversing with myself: How did she do that? What strange vegetable is that? Is he getting bugs and critters? How do her tomatoes look so great?
Goodness Comes When No One Is Watching
By July and August, the plots were lush, full, green. Clearly, gardeners came and went at unusual hours, sticking to themselves, heads down, masks on, unidentified, unrecognizable. Heads of lettuce and kale filled some plots, rosemary and basil herbs grew tall, green beans twisted through trellises in other plots, bees buzzed over pollinator plots, Keebler-like elf homes appeared in children’s plots, and tomato globes — the pièce the resistance of the community garden — reddened and smelled luscious.
Despite the absence of human beings, somehow, for the first time since becoming a community gardener, I won an award. A sign labeling my plot Garden of the Week magically appeared, and I could not stop smiling. I felt like a kid waking up to a gift from the Tooth Fairy, but this was the Garden Fairy.
In early September, I visited the community garden alone, the temperatures cooling, the shuffle of animals in the woods now quiet, and the sun rising over the tree canopy an hour later than in June, The end of this strange gardening season was near. Tomato plants appeared brown and scraggly, pepper plants leafy but fruitless, arugula greens on their way out, and cucumber vines curling and dying. The peaceful buzzing in pollinator plots stilled, with only a few bees drunkenly drifting over stalks.
Human Interaction Refreshes Me
A neighboring gardener and I bent over our vegetables and herbs. Keeping true to social distance, we talked about our plots, the success of our plantings, and the challenges we faced with some vegetables. It was the first real conversation I had with a gardener since May, and it refreshed me, revived me and reminded me how much I love the garden. Community spirit lived, if for a moment.
The 2020 community garden season is coming to a close, and I am beyond ready to flip the calendar to 2021. Before I do, I add an asterisk to the record, as if the garden were a baseball season disrupted or foreshortened by an event.
* In 2020, the community garden flourished, but the human community took a hit.
Diane Tunick Morello is a writer, blogger and life-long learner in Riverside, CT.
Learn more at www.dianetunickmorello.strikingly.com
