By INGRID McCLEARY
Between each season lies a pause. I'm not talking just about winter, spring, summer and fall. There's also the football season, the kitten season, the camping season and the "there goes the last leaf" season. Though the latter four have distinct first moments, they aren't pre-printed on calendars because these moments happen at different times for each person.
For me, there's the pause right after the Super Bowl. Having centered my mind on football for the last five months, it comes as a shock to wake up Sunday morning and realize I won't spend it in front of the television. Untethered, I float around, dabbling halfheartedly in projects, till one day I happen to notice the gladiolus bulbs sprouting. It hits me. . . . Time to garden!
Once again, my Sundays are mapped out. This alone gives me a sense of purpose, of direction. Visions of violet pansies visited daily by fluttering butterflies fill my head.
Gardening gives you a sense of accomplishment. The results are immediate as evidenced by the weed pile to your right, the embedded dirt under your fingernails, and the growing ache in your back. But after you're done, there are few moments of peace greater than what envelops you as you bask in the soft afternoon sun contemplating your garden.
This year, I began gardening with a vengeance. Last summer, I had a shoulder operation, which prevented me from pulling weeds. Within four weeks, insidious blades of grass crept stealthily over the carefully laid wood and rock borders. Their feeder lines amassed an army and began a relentless attack, surrounding, overcoming and ultimately choking the life from my personal oasis of peace.
I stood by helplessly as my backyard garden became simply a sectioned-off parcel of incredibly healthy grass. Sometimes, I appealed to my husband for help; he promptly took the weed-whacker to the garden. Unfortunately, the whirling blades decapitated grass and flowers alike, leaving behind grass with a snappy crewcut.
Though the male/female duty line may waver within each family, in our house my husband does the yard work, and I tend the gardens. He hacks, mows, rakes and dumps . . . masculine traits. I nurture, aerate and pluck . . . feminine traits. Digging is asexual; it depends on what kind of mood you're in or how energetic you feel.
This year, I recruited my sons, figuring the experience would instill in them an appreciation for all living things. And it did . . . just not with the living things I'd planned.
Instead of treading carefully around the few remaining patches of ground cover, they stomped on them in their race to dig the biggest hole. Instead of gently working the dirt loose from fragile roots, they tossed the dirt clods to each other in long passes before dumping them in the wheelbarrow. And instead of whooping with excitement whenever they spotted another surviving flower, they dropped to their knees and exclaimed, "Look at the size of this worm! It's gigantic."
Indeed, they felt no remorse for slicing bulbs in two with their shovels, but when Travis realized he'd accidentally done the same with a worm, he insisted we stop and perform a funeral for the thing.
I see gardening as an opportunity to get back in touch with the earth, an ashes-to-ashes, circle-of-life type of thing. I guess my sons saw gardening as an adventure. But they enjoyed themselves . . . as did I. And I guess that's what matters most in the yin and yang of gardening.
Ingrid McCleary is a columnist for The Sun.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, March 20, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.