Spring is in the air and I want to get into the garden! Time to hear about the other kind of plot I ponder. This is a piece I wrote for our community garden's newsletter last spring. Enjoy!
My almost-two-year-old son loves bugs. When he is playing in the backyard, he’ll let out a squeal of delight, announcing, “Pider!” Which means he has found a spider, is pointing at it, and wants me to come and look.
My son makes no distinction in his excitement about bugs—be they ladybugs, earthworms, or centipedes. Butterfly or venomous arachnid, my son is fascinated.
I wish I could’ve said the same for myself. For most of my life I have been terrified of bugs. I was afraid of bees, petrified by spiders, immobilized by centipedes. Bugs were the stuff of nightmares. Merely knowing that a Daddy-long-legs was somewhere in the house was enough to make me run out shrieking until I had conclusive proof that it was dead.
I'm not exaggerating.
While I’m sure my bug-phobia was the source of amusement for some family members, I found it debilitating. So I prayed for help. And God provided: the first house I lived in after I got married had spiders the size of softballs. Huge and hairy. (Again, I'm not exaggerating.) I thought I would die. Or have a seizure.
We eventually learned how to trap these giant wolf spiders, which never actually bit us. But in their place, new, smaller spiders moved in—aggressive spiders that bit us repeatedly. In comparison, the wolf spiders were downright friendly—and we belatedly realized they had been keeping the nasty spiders away.
So I didn’t die, or have a seizure. Now anything less than a tarantula could hardly be called “big” in my books.
God answered my prayer another way when I started to garden. Within a few weeks of breaking ground, I realized that I no longer worried about what creepy crawlies were awaiting me as I dug. I had gloves now. But more than that, I had learned to coexist with the companions of my little garden ecosystem.
Because I realized that I need bees to pollinate my berry bushes. And spiders reduce the amount of predatory bugs that compete with me for my produce. Even centipedes have a place—in fact, my paranoia evaporated in a second when I learned that centipedes eat slug eggs!
So, even if I still wouldn’t want one crawling up my arm, as I teach my son about the world around him, I have introduced many of these bugs—my former enemies—as friends. And I am gratified to see that, so far, he is free and unafraid. I just pray that when he brings home something antennaed and many-legged, I never shriek--so that he never learns to fear these amazing creatures that do us all the service for which they were designed.
hey Genevieve. I really want to start a small vegetable garden in the back yard but have very little 'know-how' or inspiration to move beyond ideas and intention, and toward action.
ReplyDeleteI need a starting point--like a good book on practical home organic gardening. Do you have any suggestions?
Keep up the blogging.
Jeremy
Hey Jeremy,
ReplyDeleteSo glad to hear the gardening bug has bitten you too! ...then again, considering my post, I'm not sure of implications of that analogy...too late at night to try to be clever...
Anyway, as a place to start, I recommend the Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew. Though I don't recommend his "Mel's Mix" soil method--I recommend just getting a good veggie mix soil. (it's cheaper, more locally sustainable, and you don't have to wear a ventilator when you're shoveling it!)
Last year we got our soil from Stream Organics or EcoSoil. (I can't remember for sure--but I think I remember an invoice from EcoSoil) Of course, you can always just garden in the ground if you've got good soil--the raised beds have some advantages, but it's not necessary.
But Mel's other methods have been very useful. And especially with a small plot, you'll want to make the most use out of your space as possible, and his square-foot gardening method is great for that. One warning: find out how tall your plants will be growing and then avoid planting tall, bushy ones right next to small, short ones--otherwise they get too shaded and pout.