My Garden Is Not In The Dirt
For my first job, I filled planter boxes with dirt for 10¢ a flat. Even in the 80s, this would have been considered underpaid, but I guess there weren’t laws about hiring a neighbourhood kid for cash back then. (Are there now? Am I missing an opportunity to have my flowerbeds weeded for $2?)
We lived beside a bustling country business called Hills Garden Farmers Market. If the sun was shining, they were farming, and the fields surrounding our home were often full of pick-your-own-strawberries thrill seekers, or gotta-get-momma-a-hanging-plant-for-Mother’s-Day procrastinators, or “them there be soy beans,” good ol’ boys.
I would hike across the yard to the big greenhouse before planting season. I didn’t have to check in with anybody, just hoist my little 10 year old self up on an overturned milk crate so that my waist was aligned with the edge of the “dirt box.” (Official scientific garden centre name.) New soil that smelled like worms and summer would be waiting there for me.
The “dirt box” was basically a sandbox on stilts with a ledge on one end to hold a plastic flat. I would arrange little seedling holders within the flat until it was full and symmetrical and then I would take the scooper (which might have been a galvanized steel contraption like you would see in a grain bin, or it might have been a cut-up plastic pop bottle - who knows - memory is weird) and I’d scoop dirt into the flat until every little pocket was within half an inch from the top.
There would be a skid onto which I would pile the flats as I filled them. They would go pretty high, but not too high because plastic flats aren’t very sturdy once you surpass fifteen of them. I wanted to fill a skid. I never did. The skid would be empty every time I came in, just as the dirt box would be full.
I liked the dirt. I liked how the greenhouse always smelled like rain. I liked the sound of the scoop as it scraped against the wooden floor of the dirt box. I liked how sometimes the dirt would sprinkle on my feet and when I took my sneakers off at the end of a grueling shift there would be little round stains on my socks, right where my shoelace holes were.
If it was early in the season, the dirt would be bitter cold and my fingers would turn red and stiffen into old lady fingers. (You know… like a 30-year-old’s…) but if it was getting on into spring it would be more like digging in the sand on a beach in July. By that time, things would be growing around me, the greenhouse having graduated from empty shell with empty shelves to something that actually held green things.
When I decided I’d had enough for the day, I would wipe my hands on my pants (sorry Mom!) count the number of flats I’d piled on the skid, and I’d march to the barn/shop on the other side of the barn/barn where I’d announce to Ron—the farmer/owner/bossman—my total.
He’d grunt or nod and write that number in a book beside the cash register.
At the end of the season—once flowers were in bloom and the greenhouse was open to customers—he’d give me a carbon paper with dates and numbers along with a cheque with my name on it.
My mother would take me to the CIBC (after I changed my dirty pants, of course) where I would use the pen they kept on a beaded chain to fill out my own deposit slip for $26.20.
I was rich!
And so began my journey of underselling myself.
Just kidding. (But only kind of.)
In 1998 I worked at Zellers for minimum wage which was something like $8 an hour. (Remember Zellers?! le sigh — my favourite part of that job was when someone paid with a personal cheque [can you even believe that people used to do that?] and I’d get to use that swippy tool that KA-CHUNKED when you ran it across the paper.) They erected a makeshift greenhouse in the parking lot to sell flowers and I was assigned to sit out there and assist customers. Fun! I spent my time deadheading petunias and I remember thinking I could do this for the rest of my life! Hahahaha!
When my husband and I bought my childhood home from my parents in 2011, Hills Garden Farmers Market had long since closed down. (I found some of their old signage in the forest and now use it as decor in my house. POTATOES! BEANS! PROUD MEMBER OF THE ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION!) When we moved in, my mother (an avid and skilled gardener) said, “Don’t feel like you have to maintain the garden.”
Oh Mother, have you forgotten that I have been training for this? Not only have I filled more than 200 flats with dirt for three consecutive seasons, but I have spent, like, five four hour shifts picking dead flowers off of plants twelve years ago. Hahahahaha! This is child’s play!
The garden plot was something like fifty feet by twenty-five. In other words, HUGE. This was in a time when I had three small children and Pinterest had just started to take off. So, naturally, I built a fence so the daisies would have a frame; I built a bamboo teepee so the beans would have something to climb; I commandeered three large tires, dug them into the ground, and declared each child shall have their own garden in a garden and they’re going to like it, for goodness sake! I built a stone path and a little bench. I took pictures of myself in my peasant dress and rubber boots. I planted All The Things and it was awesome.
And I hated it.
I was overwhelmed and (again) underpaid. (Did you know that no one tips you for caring for your own garden? The horror!) The first and only time I made salsa from my own spoils it took all day and yielded only two jars and I declared to the universe, “Never again!”
Hills Garden and Zellers didn’t teach me about the harvest. My own garden educated me quickly. Yes, it’s lovely to pop that hard won cherry tomato in your mouth and have it explode with the fireworks of summer flavour, but it’s not the root of my happiness.
I was meant to cultivate other things and I’m okay with that now. I plant seeds, I nurture, I coax to maturity, I celebrate a strong stalk and hearty blossom, and I harvest (or aid in the harvest of) complete stories. My garden is not in the dirt. My garden is on a bookshelf. And it’s prettier than any bouquet I could have imagined.
Scooping dirt while alone in a plastic walled cavern was a great place to entertain myself with fantasies about fairies and talking birds and what it would be like to be famous. Today, within my charming office, I get to actually share stories about fairies and talking birds and what it’s like to be famous. Hmmm. How ‘bout that…
Resurrected from my old blog for your viewing pleasure: photos from The Year of the Garden (as known as Should I Be Embarrassed That I Still Wear This Dress Twelve Years Later?)
