Grow a Pair!

Haha! Got you! Please, I consider myself to be vaguely tasteful and this blog's subject matter is not worthy of Maxim, but more along the lines of Better Homes and Gardens. Sortof.

This is merely a rumination on my childhood summers, prefaced by a sensationalist title to capture the reader's attention. It worked, didn't it?

Anyway, as I have mentioned ad nauseum, I have lived in a lot of places growing up. But one of the few consistent memories that I had was my mom's love of planting and gardening, wherever we lived. Sometimes the properties we lived on were not sympathetic to a garden, but they would accept bushes, flowers, shrubs, etc.,

My mom is not a girlie girl. She is happiest digging in the dirt, planting new, er, plants, plucking a homegrown tomato off the vine for dinner, or cutting a few roses and putting them in a bowl to spruce up the dining room table. She enjoys other activities, to be sure, but this is one of the major activities that I believe give her a defined sense of pleasure.

I, on the other hand, despite my aspirations, do not like to garden. Despite being a latent environmentalist, I could take or leave plants for my own personal use. I go into Home Depot's garden section and fall over from sticker shock. $42 for a tree?! I could buy shoes! I had a topiary in high school, as I was obsessed with them, but not enough to water it. Mom nursed that back to health.

I have lasting scars from the time I tried to weed our rose beds as the weeds were getting as tall as I. And I had heard our landlady express dismay over how her prized roses were being overrun by weeds. So, seeking an opportunity to do a good deed, I pulled and I yanked and I got two 3-inch gashes for my efforts.

I also attempted to grow a little basil from seeds purchased from the dollar section of Target, but they started to look a little sad. So, I fed them just a little Miracle-Gro and that annihilated them. No joke. It was there one day looking a little peckish and dead as a doornail the next.

I think it all stems back from my childhood. My mom tried her best to get us kids (my brother and I) involved in gardening. She even let us pick out our own seeds and plant them. But Wisconsin soil is fickle and while green beans, tomatoes, and zucchini tend to proliferate- slightly more Utopian horticultural dreams like watermelons, do not. I think I also tried to grow something else that did sprout but was not as interesting on my plate as it was on the shiny seed packet. Probably spaghetti squash or something like that.

But for those of you who do not have black thumbs I urge you to try a little garden, even an herb garden. Especially if you have kids. As we get farther and farther from nature I think more and more kids literally believe that food only comes from restaurants and the grocery store and that dirt's only purpose is to turn into mudpies. Show them where it really comes from. I remember the incredible pride I felt as a second grader when my alfalfa shoots sprouted in my milk carton. I wasn't terribly taken by the taste of my labors, but I loved that I had grown it all by myself. Well, cheek to jowl with my classmates' milk cartons in that windowsill. But my alfalfa was mine alone! I had raised it up from the darkness and into the light! Hyperbole? Probably. But success? You bet your sweet bippie.

As my fresh cilantro becomes a weekly habit at 30 cents a week I am going to grow my own cilantro and try that basil again. Maybe even a little rosemary in honor of my grandma? I've already got the OK from my new property manager!

To paraphrase circa 1980's Sesame Street won't you come out and (grow something) with me?

GQ put out a very informative article in their May 2009 issue called, "Grow Your Own: a Man's Introduction to Gardening" Unfortunately, they did not provide a hyperlink to the article. So if you want to read it, leave me a comment and I'll send you a PDF or there's always ebay- Zac Efron is on the cover if that's any additional incentive. :) Happy summer y'all!

Also, I don't know him from Adam, but a Mr. Colin McCrate, founder of Seattle Urban Farm Company was mentioned in the article. Here is a link to their blog, http://sustainableseattle.blogspot.com/2009/04/seattles-colin-mccrate-in-may-gq.html