Gardens of Hope
My garden is my teacher.
This fall we planted garlic in our backyard garden. And so, a few weeks ago I snipped off the scapes curling from green stalks. (I pickled them. Some people liked these pickled garlic scapes. Most did not.) If one does not trim these tops the plant focuses too much energy producing flowers rather than the bulbs with which we are familiar. In about a month, I will harvest the plants and then dry the bulbs so that I can have homegrown garlic for the upcoming year.
This makes me wonder about this week’s complaint from the Israelites. “The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.’” (Numbers 11)
My teacher instructs. Garlic and for that matter, onions, leeks, melons and cucumbers require cultivation. They demand a landed, agrarian society that has the time to tend to such crops. Perhaps the Israelites’ complaints are not so much about the tasteless, albeit sustaining manna, but instead about their wandering. They are tired of living as nomads.
They just want to have a home. They want to be so settled that they can plant a garden. Of course, they forget that the delicacies for which they pine did not come from their own gardens but instead from those of their Egyptian taskmasters. Or perhaps they looked back at their Egyptian taskmaster’s meals and imagined they were their own. The imagination of yesteryear is not always an accurate portrayal of past experiences.
Collard greens are for example staples of African American cuisine because these were one of the few vegetables slaveholders allowed their enslaved Africans to grow for themselves. Their bitterness is transformed by even this modicum of freedom. Scraps of vegetables dished out by slaveholders do not taste the same as those grown with one’s own hands.
There is a taste of freedom in a garden. Supermarket vegetables are not the same as homegrown! This is why building community gardens is so meaningful. They are liberating. These gardens provide people with space to plant their own vegetables, to be less dependent on the prices of store-bought goods. They offer ownership of one’s own food. They provide glimpses of freedom. Freedom sweetens the taste of even the most bitter of vegetables.
Planting vegetables even in a modest garden such as my own, is in some, small way a statement of faith in the future. It is saying, “We will be here long enough to tend to these crops. We will be here next season to enjoy these garlicky delights.”
This is why the early Zionists invested so much in the kibbutz movement. Tending to crops, planting trees, and most especially fruit trees, are about looking years into the future. “We will be here even several generations from now when we can enjoy this fruit together.”
The wanderer can forage. The Israelites gathered manna and there is a measure of delight and wonder in wandering and exploring. “The forest is the menu,” I was advised by the waiter at a Madrid restaurant that centers mushrooms for every course, including dessert.
The gardener, however, can plan. The wanderer explores.
The garden can restore hope in the future.
We are here to stay.
And soon, if I have done everything right, and continue to do everything right, and of course the weather cooperates, it will also grant me some tasty garlic.
The garden provides hope.
Have faith in the future!