Finding Peace in a Survival Garden
Pamela Jackson
From left: 1. "Look at all this food!" I posted on social media in the early days of the pandemic; 2. Black Swallowtail caterpillar enjoying the fennel; 3. A newly-released Praying Mantis protecting my romaine; 4. The flourishing survival garden
I’ve always found peace in gardening. My mom was an avid gardener and self-described “health nut.” Born in the decade after the Great Depression, gardening was a necessity for her family of seven. Gardening was a habit learned from her mother and passed down to me, where it became a passion. As an introvert, the garden became my favorite solitary playground.
Our tiny, 752-square foot childhood home sat on a 6,866-square foot lot, which was unusual in our neighborhood 16 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. My mom tended to her rose and herb garden just outside the back door. An expansive lawn with plum and apricot trees centered the yard, and behind that was a large garden bordered by grapevines and usually filled with tomatoes, squash, corn, beans, and punishment in the form of my childhood nemesis: black-eyed peas. I still haven’t developed a taste for them.
When I was eleven years old, I started to garden alone as a way to escape my physically abusive father. As my childhood became increasingly unstable, the garden had been left to die. The withering vines and dead stalks that were once so vibrant and nourishing became a stark reminder of hopelessness and lost innocence. “Go outside and play. Come home when the streetlights come on” didn’t always work well for me. Rather than running the streets with the neighborhood kids, I craved solace. In the garden, I found a trusted and protective partner when I could not always count on adults to care for me. I loved the garden and I felt like she loved me back.
I didn’t understand at the time that the trauma of an abusive childhood would develop into a lifelong anxiety disorder, soothed in part by the meditative act of pushing my hands into clumps of soil and helping Mother Nature flourish into beautiful blossoms, vines, and stalks that in turn nourished me. Gardening and me, we had become symbiotic. It was my lifeline in dark times and became an extension of who I am and a way for me to express myself.
As an apartment-dwelling adult, all I ever wanted in life was a “bit of earth” (Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden was my ultimate fantasy). Gardening was the main thing missing from my life. I had to get creative. I had a houseplant named “Sam,” a Schefflera who kept me company when I moved to Northern California and later to Madison, Wisconsin. I grew basil on windowsills and cleared the smallest patch of dirt in front of my window in Wisconsin to grow zucchini in college. Everyone laughed at me for that, but gardening was in my DNA and helped to silence the anxious echoes of a troubled past.
Eight years ago, I bought a home and finally got my bit of earth. The steep landscape, multiple tiers, and stubborn clay soil have yet to break me. I’ve muscled many hundreds of pounds of cinderblock into the yard, bought a diverse collection of power saws, and grown creative with custom raised garden beds. Take that impenetrable soil and abandoned palm tree root balls left behind by the poor gardening choices of previous homeowners!
I lose myself in gardening, sometimes working nonstop for hours until concerned family members remind me how long I’ve been outside or bring me my forgotten glass of water. In the garden, my anxiety melts away while perseverance and a sense of accomplishment and pride thrives. I carefully used my Sunset Western Garden Book - a textbook saved from the horticulture course I took in college to satisfy my lab science requirement - to create a drought-tolerant, bee and butterfly friendly garden. It worked. They seemed happy to share my space.
And then the pandemic hit: COVID-19.
Awareness of the virus started to spread in February, but fear had not yet set in. I’ve been teased for being a bit of a germaphobe most of my life. I always wash my hands. I disinfect surfaces regularly. I remember to clean doorknobs and light switches. I try not to touch things, especially in highly trafficked areas. I have my own “Mr. Rogers” routine when I arrive home: I strip, shower, and put on house clothes before doing anything else. To me, people are dirty, gardens are not. And I had big plans for my garden this year, if they could be fully realized in the midst of a worldwide health crisis.
By mid-March, the virus had released a web of fear across the United States. Panic shopping was in full swing. Toilet paper was the first to go, followed by fresh produce, decent lettuce in particular, before people ransacked the dry food aisles (I was not saddened by the lack of bags of dried black-eyed peas on supermarket shelves. Someone else’s kids are being punished tonight, I chuckled). Meat supplies dwindled, as did dairy. No eggs left. No bread.
The frenzy in the grocery store was terrifying and chaotic, and I still needed lettuce. “Needs” would later be redefined as “wants” as the pandemic wore on and we all had to learn to make do with the food available. Friends turned to social media to share tips on which local markets still had certain foods in stock. Restaurants started selling off fresh produce and pantry staples. Smaller, independent grocery stores got creative and repackaged bulk products purchased from restaurant supply chains. Me? I went to the nursery.
My safety strategy: Visit the nursery early in the morning when they open the doors and avoid human contact. The only other shopper present was an elderly man who just wanted to walk. He figured the nursery was a safe way to do so. I nodded in agreement with an understanding smile. Nurseries are just gardens you can take home, I noted. Nursery shopping was something I would normally do in the spring, but this spring was different. I wasn’t just shopping. I was planning to survive. I wasn’t at the nursery simply because I loved to garden. I was prepping for the apocalypse, and while that made me sad and anxious, I also felt victorious, strong and self-sufficient. What must life be like for non-gardeners right now? I made a point of buying edible plants that could supplement trips to the grocery store. The more we could stay home while still enjoying fresh food, the better. [Image 1]
By late March, I had a nice crop of romaine and joked with friends, “Remember last year when all we had to fear was salad?” due to numerous nationwide E. coli breakouts. The pandemic was bad and only getting worse. But my radish seeds had sprouted, there were fresh chives, the butterflies found all the pots of parsley and fennel I planted for them (in a futile attempt to keep them out of mine), and the tomatoes hadn’t died yet, a victory in my humid, often overcast coastal neighborhood. My neighbor, also a gardener and urban farmer, shared freshly laid eggs with me in exchange for heads of romaine. We would have freely shared, but it was the apocalypse, we joked, so bartering was more fun. Her sons were thrilled to unload some dinosaur-sized zucchini on our front porch. “No more zucchini!” they begged their mom. I magically transformed it into Chocolate Chip Banana Zucchini Bread and returned it to their front porch with a smirk on my face. I bet they like zucchini now. [Image 2]
By mid-April, reports increased of the national food supply chain breaking. Farmers were throwing away tons of produce. Restaurants were no longer able to buy it and there were no pandemic trucking plans in place to get fresh food where it needed to go. Meanwhile, unemployment was at an all-time high and people were lined up for miles at food banks. I needed to garden, to regain a sense of calm and control over my life. More importantly, I desperately needed to expand my vegetable garden to survive. I was panic gardening, if you will, and I needed a plan.
I started by clearing new areas of the yard and taking detailed measurements. I spent hours online learning how to make my own wooden raised garden beds, because wood seemed easier to obtain during a pandemic than heavy cinder blocks. I used floorplan design software to visualize different garden layouts, and carefully researched the right mix of soil for the vegetable garden I was planning: 60% topsoil, 30% compost or manure, and 10% Vermiculite or Perlite. But the first thing I needed was mulch to control all the weeds I had neglected for months.
I am particularly well-suited for a stay-at-home crisis. I can stay home like a champ! I go grocery shopping every two-and-a-half weeks, make occasional trips to the fresh fish market or nursery, and have made limited and strategically planned trips to the big box home improvement store. In April, I was thrilled to learn that a local nursery would shop for you and deliver to your car for curbside pickup. Their mulch was three times more expensive than the home improvement store, but this was “safe mulch,” sans human contact. It was a pandemic shopping dream, and even though they were already sold out of ladybugs to release, I could garden! I could survive!
The mulch smelled of earth and freshly cut wood as I spread it in satisfying thick layers throughout the garden. Alone, I was in my element. Soft breezes lightly touched my skin. Small birds chirped and silky black crows sat on powerlines above the garden, eyeballing me as they made loud raspy calls to each other. Kids played in the distance. An occasional airplane caught my eye as it lifted up and over the ocean on takeoff. The buzzing sound of a hummingbird that flew in to supervise my work made me smile. This is equanimity, I thought, a state of being I was learning in the guided meditation app I downloaded onto my tablet and was trying to make into a daily habit.
Early May brought news of Murder Hornets in Washington State, condemned as tyrants here to destroy the honeybee population. It’s only a matter of time before they reach California, scientists warned. With the bees go the humans. Buckle up and welcome to 2020! Not in my backyard, I thought, as I patiently waited for a bee from the hive hidden in the alley behind my house to finish enjoying the purple spherical flowers on my chives before picking a handful for dinner. I saw the video of a Praying Mantis viciously devouring a Murder Hornet on the internet, so I was happy when my neighbor texted to say she had placed a bucket of her “leftover” Praying Mantises on my porch to share (she bought 200 of them!). I later learned their indiscriminate eating habits may not make them the best ecological pest control solution, but I lied to myself that there were plenty of meaty black widow spiders to keep them busy and away from beneficial insects.
I spread at least 40 tiny mantises throughout the garden, debating with myself over the plural of mantis. I wanted it to be “manti.” It’s not. I checked on my mantises daily like pets, softly speaking to them in a hushed tone and asking how they were doing with a soul-satisfying smile on my face. For those few minutes every morning, I forgot the world was falling apart. It was just me and the only two mantises I was able to find again after their big release party - two little mantises, keeping bugs off my romaine. Every morning, they climbed to the top of the lettuce leaves and lifted their oddly angled little bodies up a little and cocked their heads as if to say hello to me, or so I imagined. I also wondered if they were just sizing me up, waiting until they grew large enough to make me into a snack. “You’re Next,” I imagined her gleefully declaring as she rubbed the palms of her wicked little hands together. [Image 3]
One morning, I had to engage in a dramatic mantis rescue. She had fallen out of the raised garden bed and into a spiderweb, and a huge spider was headed right for her! I swung into action, grabbing a plant identification stick from a pony pack of marigolds, which I wielded in my best sword-fighting stance to stop the spider. Garden like no one is watching, I laughed at myself, mildly embarrassed. The spider retreated and I used the plant tag to tug under the mantis until she was free of the web and gave her a ride to the safety of some radicchio with little tasty bugs. I imagined that she now thought I was her god. We were going to be friends for life, or at least for a couple of weeks until all the mantises disappeared into nature.
By mid-May, I pep-talked myself into braving the home improvement store to buy the supplies I needed to expand our availability of fresh fruits and vegetables. I carefully drafted out everything I needed and made a list, sorted by aisle and bin number: 3" deck screws A15/B9; 2x6x8' wood A51/B2; 2x6x6' wood A51/B2; 4x4x6' square lumber A51/B2; and of course, soil, manure and Perlite. I found a detailed floorplan of the store online and mapped out the most efficient route to take once I entered. I was terrified and I felt guilty. What if I do this and catch the virus? Is this essential? Will I regret this? I convinced myself I had a solid plan. I could get in and out of that store in less than half an hour, and I had an old N95 mask for which I sewed a washable custom cloth face mask to slip over it.
I set my alarm clock for 5am on a weekday and went to the home improvement store at 6am when they opened doors. There were enough people there to make me uncomfortable, but physical distancing was possible at this early hour. I parked near the garden area, donned my mask and the gloves we thought were needed at the time, and started at one end of the store with a flatbed cart, thinking I would leave via the now exit-only garden area due to the pandemic. I took slow, deep breaths, attempting to ease my anxiety. Unfortunately, the garden exit was closed until later in the day, when “normal” people, less afraid of the virus, shopped with far less care. I pushed the heavy cart back through the store to the open registers, refusing to use the self check-out machine a clerk motioned me toward. No thanks. That has germs I would have to touch. I’ll wait for the clerk to help me from behind this huge plexiglass cage, thank you very much.
I carefully measured and cut the lumber and assembled one-and-a-half garden boxes before running out of screws. It figures I would miscalculate and run out of screws during a pandemic. After three more trips to the home improvement store at 6am and two trips to the nursery, I carried everything up the 27 stairs leading to the new section of the garden. I was determined. I had everything I would need to survive the pandemic, nutritionally and emotionally.
I filled the boxes with a measured mixture of soil, manure, and Perlite, driving a shovel into the loose earth and turning it until it blended into a smooth nutritious foundation. I removed my gloves and splayed my fingers palms down, pushing my hands fingers-first into the soil and back up, letting the warm, damp earth fall onto my forearms. The dirt under my fingernails was a badge of honor and a sign that I was going to be OK.
And then, 2020 shit in my soil.
Within days, plants started to wither and dry. In no time, the leaves of nearly everything I had planted - peas, squash, tomatoes, basil, chilis, scallions, marigolds, and sunflowers - curled almost as though their roots had been burned. The carefully researched ratio of soil-compost-Perlite was marred by the acidity of the manure I chose. It was too much shit, just as 2020 in general was too much. Too much death. Too much heartache. Too much angst and fighting and abuse. I let out a sardonic laugh that signified the ludicrousness of the situation, and then went back to the home improvement store and nursery for more soil to correct the ratio of my dirt and to buy round two of edible survival plants.
Once replanted, I shared a detailed map of my garden with friends, joking that it would be a key to available food and edible landscapes when the apocalypse really came. For someone so keen on horror and dystopian fiction, I’m not sure I would like to survive beyond the first season. My garden is your garden at the end of times, I said, allowing the humor to mask my fear.
The pandemic wore on, but the food supply chain quickly recovered. Mainstream grocery stores remained flush with fresh produce, even though the availability of decent lettuce remained iffy at times. I discovered a farm-to-market fruit and vegetable stand; the open-air provided enough ventilation to make shopping feel safe. Gardening no longer felt like an anxious activity born out of pseudo-apocalyptic nervousness and the need to survive. It once again became the symbiotic activity that soothed my anxiety and made me whole.
In the months that followed, my garden flourished. The corn grew strong, tall, and productive with fully developed ears that tasted starchy and bland, but the chickens next door loved it, and that earned me more fresh eggs. I learned to freeze Fresno Chilis, regrow green onions from grocery store scraps, and correct the blossom-end rot on my favorite tomato, the San Marzano. Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars hungrily devoured pockets of parsley and sometimes fennel until reemerging from their chrysalis to take flight. And somewhere, I imagine, hiding in an undisturbed corner of the garden, is a Praying Mantis, rubbing her little hands together and sizing me up with an appreciative cock of the head as if to say, we’re all going to be OK. [Image 4]
Our tiny, 752-square foot childhood home sat on a 6,866-square foot lot, which was unusual in our neighborhood 16 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. My mom tended to her rose and herb garden just outside the back door. An expansive lawn with plum and apricot trees centered the yard, and behind that was a large garden bordered by grapevines and usually filled with tomatoes, squash, corn, beans, and punishment in the form of my childhood nemesis: black-eyed peas. I still haven’t developed a taste for them.
When I was eleven years old, I started to garden alone as a way to escape my physically abusive father. As my childhood became increasingly unstable, the garden had been left to die. The withering vines and dead stalks that were once so vibrant and nourishing became a stark reminder of hopelessness and lost innocence. “Go outside and play. Come home when the streetlights come on” didn’t always work well for me. Rather than running the streets with the neighborhood kids, I craved solace. In the garden, I found a trusted and protective partner when I could not always count on adults to care for me. I loved the garden and I felt like she loved me back.
I didn’t understand at the time that the trauma of an abusive childhood would develop into a lifelong anxiety disorder, soothed in part by the meditative act of pushing my hands into clumps of soil and helping Mother Nature flourish into beautiful blossoms, vines, and stalks that in turn nourished me. Gardening and me, we had become symbiotic. It was my lifeline in dark times and became an extension of who I am and a way for me to express myself.
As an apartment-dwelling adult, all I ever wanted in life was a “bit of earth” (Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden was my ultimate fantasy). Gardening was the main thing missing from my life. I had to get creative. I had a houseplant named “Sam,” a Schefflera who kept me company when I moved to Northern California and later to Madison, Wisconsin. I grew basil on windowsills and cleared the smallest patch of dirt in front of my window in Wisconsin to grow zucchini in college. Everyone laughed at me for that, but gardening was in my DNA and helped to silence the anxious echoes of a troubled past.
Eight years ago, I bought a home and finally got my bit of earth. The steep landscape, multiple tiers, and stubborn clay soil have yet to break me. I’ve muscled many hundreds of pounds of cinderblock into the yard, bought a diverse collection of power saws, and grown creative with custom raised garden beds. Take that impenetrable soil and abandoned palm tree root balls left behind by the poor gardening choices of previous homeowners!
I lose myself in gardening, sometimes working nonstop for hours until concerned family members remind me how long I’ve been outside or bring me my forgotten glass of water. In the garden, my anxiety melts away while perseverance and a sense of accomplishment and pride thrives. I carefully used my Sunset Western Garden Book - a textbook saved from the horticulture course I took in college to satisfy my lab science requirement - to create a drought-tolerant, bee and butterfly friendly garden. It worked. They seemed happy to share my space.
And then the pandemic hit: COVID-19.
Awareness of the virus started to spread in February, but fear had not yet set in. I’ve been teased for being a bit of a germaphobe most of my life. I always wash my hands. I disinfect surfaces regularly. I remember to clean doorknobs and light switches. I try not to touch things, especially in highly trafficked areas. I have my own “Mr. Rogers” routine when I arrive home: I strip, shower, and put on house clothes before doing anything else. To me, people are dirty, gardens are not. And I had big plans for my garden this year, if they could be fully realized in the midst of a worldwide health crisis.
By mid-March, the virus had released a web of fear across the United States. Panic shopping was in full swing. Toilet paper was the first to go, followed by fresh produce, decent lettuce in particular, before people ransacked the dry food aisles (I was not saddened by the lack of bags of dried black-eyed peas on supermarket shelves. Someone else’s kids are being punished tonight, I chuckled). Meat supplies dwindled, as did dairy. No eggs left. No bread.
The frenzy in the grocery store was terrifying and chaotic, and I still needed lettuce. “Needs” would later be redefined as “wants” as the pandemic wore on and we all had to learn to make do with the food available. Friends turned to social media to share tips on which local markets still had certain foods in stock. Restaurants started selling off fresh produce and pantry staples. Smaller, independent grocery stores got creative and repackaged bulk products purchased from restaurant supply chains. Me? I went to the nursery.
My safety strategy: Visit the nursery early in the morning when they open the doors and avoid human contact. The only other shopper present was an elderly man who just wanted to walk. He figured the nursery was a safe way to do so. I nodded in agreement with an understanding smile. Nurseries are just gardens you can take home, I noted. Nursery shopping was something I would normally do in the spring, but this spring was different. I wasn’t just shopping. I was planning to survive. I wasn’t at the nursery simply because I loved to garden. I was prepping for the apocalypse, and while that made me sad and anxious, I also felt victorious, strong and self-sufficient. What must life be like for non-gardeners right now? I made a point of buying edible plants that could supplement trips to the grocery store. The more we could stay home while still enjoying fresh food, the better. [Image 1]
By late March, I had a nice crop of romaine and joked with friends, “Remember last year when all we had to fear was salad?” due to numerous nationwide E. coli breakouts. The pandemic was bad and only getting worse. But my radish seeds had sprouted, there were fresh chives, the butterflies found all the pots of parsley and fennel I planted for them (in a futile attempt to keep them out of mine), and the tomatoes hadn’t died yet, a victory in my humid, often overcast coastal neighborhood. My neighbor, also a gardener and urban farmer, shared freshly laid eggs with me in exchange for heads of romaine. We would have freely shared, but it was the apocalypse, we joked, so bartering was more fun. Her sons were thrilled to unload some dinosaur-sized zucchini on our front porch. “No more zucchini!” they begged their mom. I magically transformed it into Chocolate Chip Banana Zucchini Bread and returned it to their front porch with a smirk on my face. I bet they like zucchini now. [Image 2]
By mid-April, reports increased of the national food supply chain breaking. Farmers were throwing away tons of produce. Restaurants were no longer able to buy it and there were no pandemic trucking plans in place to get fresh food where it needed to go. Meanwhile, unemployment was at an all-time high and people were lined up for miles at food banks. I needed to garden, to regain a sense of calm and control over my life. More importantly, I desperately needed to expand my vegetable garden to survive. I was panic gardening, if you will, and I needed a plan.
I started by clearing new areas of the yard and taking detailed measurements. I spent hours online learning how to make my own wooden raised garden beds, because wood seemed easier to obtain during a pandemic than heavy cinder blocks. I used floorplan design software to visualize different garden layouts, and carefully researched the right mix of soil for the vegetable garden I was planning: 60% topsoil, 30% compost or manure, and 10% Vermiculite or Perlite. But the first thing I needed was mulch to control all the weeds I had neglected for months.
I am particularly well-suited for a stay-at-home crisis. I can stay home like a champ! I go grocery shopping every two-and-a-half weeks, make occasional trips to the fresh fish market or nursery, and have made limited and strategically planned trips to the big box home improvement store. In April, I was thrilled to learn that a local nursery would shop for you and deliver to your car for curbside pickup. Their mulch was three times more expensive than the home improvement store, but this was “safe mulch,” sans human contact. It was a pandemic shopping dream, and even though they were already sold out of ladybugs to release, I could garden! I could survive!
The mulch smelled of earth and freshly cut wood as I spread it in satisfying thick layers throughout the garden. Alone, I was in my element. Soft breezes lightly touched my skin. Small birds chirped and silky black crows sat on powerlines above the garden, eyeballing me as they made loud raspy calls to each other. Kids played in the distance. An occasional airplane caught my eye as it lifted up and over the ocean on takeoff. The buzzing sound of a hummingbird that flew in to supervise my work made me smile. This is equanimity, I thought, a state of being I was learning in the guided meditation app I downloaded onto my tablet and was trying to make into a daily habit.
Early May brought news of Murder Hornets in Washington State, condemned as tyrants here to destroy the honeybee population. It’s only a matter of time before they reach California, scientists warned. With the bees go the humans. Buckle up and welcome to 2020! Not in my backyard, I thought, as I patiently waited for a bee from the hive hidden in the alley behind my house to finish enjoying the purple spherical flowers on my chives before picking a handful for dinner. I saw the video of a Praying Mantis viciously devouring a Murder Hornet on the internet, so I was happy when my neighbor texted to say she had placed a bucket of her “leftover” Praying Mantises on my porch to share (she bought 200 of them!). I later learned their indiscriminate eating habits may not make them the best ecological pest control solution, but I lied to myself that there were plenty of meaty black widow spiders to keep them busy and away from beneficial insects.
I spread at least 40 tiny mantises throughout the garden, debating with myself over the plural of mantis. I wanted it to be “manti.” It’s not. I checked on my mantises daily like pets, softly speaking to them in a hushed tone and asking how they were doing with a soul-satisfying smile on my face. For those few minutes every morning, I forgot the world was falling apart. It was just me and the only two mantises I was able to find again after their big release party - two little mantises, keeping bugs off my romaine. Every morning, they climbed to the top of the lettuce leaves and lifted their oddly angled little bodies up a little and cocked their heads as if to say hello to me, or so I imagined. I also wondered if they were just sizing me up, waiting until they grew large enough to make me into a snack. “You’re Next,” I imagined her gleefully declaring as she rubbed the palms of her wicked little hands together. [Image 3]
One morning, I had to engage in a dramatic mantis rescue. She had fallen out of the raised garden bed and into a spiderweb, and a huge spider was headed right for her! I swung into action, grabbing a plant identification stick from a pony pack of marigolds, which I wielded in my best sword-fighting stance to stop the spider. Garden like no one is watching, I laughed at myself, mildly embarrassed. The spider retreated and I used the plant tag to tug under the mantis until she was free of the web and gave her a ride to the safety of some radicchio with little tasty bugs. I imagined that she now thought I was her god. We were going to be friends for life, or at least for a couple of weeks until all the mantises disappeared into nature.
By mid-May, I pep-talked myself into braving the home improvement store to buy the supplies I needed to expand our availability of fresh fruits and vegetables. I carefully drafted out everything I needed and made a list, sorted by aisle and bin number: 3" deck screws A15/B9; 2x6x8' wood A51/B2; 2x6x6' wood A51/B2; 4x4x6' square lumber A51/B2; and of course, soil, manure and Perlite. I found a detailed floorplan of the store online and mapped out the most efficient route to take once I entered. I was terrified and I felt guilty. What if I do this and catch the virus? Is this essential? Will I regret this? I convinced myself I had a solid plan. I could get in and out of that store in less than half an hour, and I had an old N95 mask for which I sewed a washable custom cloth face mask to slip over it.
I set my alarm clock for 5am on a weekday and went to the home improvement store at 6am when they opened doors. There were enough people there to make me uncomfortable, but physical distancing was possible at this early hour. I parked near the garden area, donned my mask and the gloves we thought were needed at the time, and started at one end of the store with a flatbed cart, thinking I would leave via the now exit-only garden area due to the pandemic. I took slow, deep breaths, attempting to ease my anxiety. Unfortunately, the garden exit was closed until later in the day, when “normal” people, less afraid of the virus, shopped with far less care. I pushed the heavy cart back through the store to the open registers, refusing to use the self check-out machine a clerk motioned me toward. No thanks. That has germs I would have to touch. I’ll wait for the clerk to help me from behind this huge plexiglass cage, thank you very much.
I carefully measured and cut the lumber and assembled one-and-a-half garden boxes before running out of screws. It figures I would miscalculate and run out of screws during a pandemic. After three more trips to the home improvement store at 6am and two trips to the nursery, I carried everything up the 27 stairs leading to the new section of the garden. I was determined. I had everything I would need to survive the pandemic, nutritionally and emotionally.
I filled the boxes with a measured mixture of soil, manure, and Perlite, driving a shovel into the loose earth and turning it until it blended into a smooth nutritious foundation. I removed my gloves and splayed my fingers palms down, pushing my hands fingers-first into the soil and back up, letting the warm, damp earth fall onto my forearms. The dirt under my fingernails was a badge of honor and a sign that I was going to be OK.
And then, 2020 shit in my soil.
Within days, plants started to wither and dry. In no time, the leaves of nearly everything I had planted - peas, squash, tomatoes, basil, chilis, scallions, marigolds, and sunflowers - curled almost as though their roots had been burned. The carefully researched ratio of soil-compost-Perlite was marred by the acidity of the manure I chose. It was too much shit, just as 2020 in general was too much. Too much death. Too much heartache. Too much angst and fighting and abuse. I let out a sardonic laugh that signified the ludicrousness of the situation, and then went back to the home improvement store and nursery for more soil to correct the ratio of my dirt and to buy round two of edible survival plants.
Once replanted, I shared a detailed map of my garden with friends, joking that it would be a key to available food and edible landscapes when the apocalypse really came. For someone so keen on horror and dystopian fiction, I’m not sure I would like to survive beyond the first season. My garden is your garden at the end of times, I said, allowing the humor to mask my fear.
The pandemic wore on, but the food supply chain quickly recovered. Mainstream grocery stores remained flush with fresh produce, even though the availability of decent lettuce remained iffy at times. I discovered a farm-to-market fruit and vegetable stand; the open-air provided enough ventilation to make shopping feel safe. Gardening no longer felt like an anxious activity born out of pseudo-apocalyptic nervousness and the need to survive. It once again became the symbiotic activity that soothed my anxiety and made me whole.
In the months that followed, my garden flourished. The corn grew strong, tall, and productive with fully developed ears that tasted starchy and bland, but the chickens next door loved it, and that earned me more fresh eggs. I learned to freeze Fresno Chilis, regrow green onions from grocery store scraps, and correct the blossom-end rot on my favorite tomato, the San Marzano. Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars hungrily devoured pockets of parsley and sometimes fennel until reemerging from their chrysalis to take flight. And somewhere, I imagine, hiding in an undisturbed corner of the garden, is a Praying Mantis, rubbing her little hands together and sizing me up with an appreciative cock of the head as if to say, we’re all going to be OK. [Image 4]
BIO: Pamela Jackson is a lifelong gardener and librarian in Southern California.