(July 29, 2018)
The Urban Farmer
Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Garden
Can I let you in on a little secret? I really dropped the ball with my garden this year.
I prepared (well, had the chickens prepare) and mulched the soil pretty early on in the season, for which I will give myself a cold, curt pat on the back. But that’s the last one I get.
Because, since I did that, I have had the busiest few months of my life. My friend and I joined an environmental group, Climate Action RI, and I took on a leadership position; I am part of a few other boards and organizations (DWC and Autumnfest being among the most prominent); I spent a bunch of time lobbying on a few bills in the state house, and as legislative session ended I have begun to help out on five-ish political campaigns; I have traveled a few times this spring, and I’ve actually maintained my social life better than ever before.
All of this, on top of work and other obligations, left me a little short on time, patience, and any shred of motivational energy. So as the spring went on, the weeds took over and the garden went unplanted. And this unfortunate reality wasn’t helped by the fact that the straw that I had used to mulch apparently wasn’t properly heat-treated…so thousands of tall, grassy plants quickly filled the beds where tomatoes and peppers were meant to be.
Needless to say, this left me more than a little overwhelmed. The end of May came much more quickly than I had anticipated (isn’t that the story of getting older, though?), and my garden was in no fit state to be planted. I had a decision to make: do I buy some plants and muster up some as-of-yet unforeseeable burst of energy to plant them (and then do that over and over to maintain the garden), or do I forego the vegetable garden altogether this year, instead focusing on my perennial fruits, chickens, and compost?
Instead of committing, I guess I kind of chose the worst combination of both options (story of my life). I bought a ton of vegetable plants in the first week of June, and did not get around to planting them until two weeks ago…in mid-July.
Ouch. I spent like six hours outside that one Sunday, weeding the entire garden – paths and all – and planting all but two beds with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and various types of squash, which had all seen better days (like, six weeks earlier when I actually bought them from the nursery). All of that said, though, they have actually grown quite a bit since I planted them, and I will probably start harvesting late in August or early in September. It won’t be a banner year in my vegetable garden, but it will do.
So why the title of this column? What did I learn?
One of the first lessons of this year is that being overwhelmed is a huge, driving de-motivator for me (and probably for a lot of you, too). You can ask my family or any of my close friends (and especially the friend who joined CARI with me): I’ve been a monster in the past couple of months. I have the tendency to spread myself way too thin, in no small part because I have no internal concept of the limitedness of my own free time. This is probably a defense mechanism that my brain developed, since the ticking away of time was the most pronounced stressor that I experienced while growing up (I’m not really sure why).
Whatever the reason though, I have the tendency to say “yes” to everything, and the only metric for whether I have time for something is whether that block of time is already booked in my calendar or not (meals, relaxation, and free time need not apply). This was taken to the extreme in the past few months, and it kind of got to the point where I would be stressed out and triggered by even the thought of quieter, less impactful, “on-my-own” type activities…especially those that required manual labor, like my garden. And so, overwhelm translated to complete lack of motivation.
But the second lesson seems to be that, if we don’t approach activities like gardening with a strive for perfection, it removes a lot of the baggage that can make them so overwhelming. I got to the point where I literally did not have the contiguous block of time I knew it would take to weed my entire garden. And the thought of being out in the summer sun for that long, and somehow moving around or canceling my other (honestly, much more exciting) obligations, all to plant a garden that I knew would ultimately perform pretty poorly given how neglectful I had already been…it all gave me the intense feeling that it wasn’t worth it.
But this year’s garden – like every year prior – could never be perfect. That’s not how nature works. That’s not how urban farming works. That’s not how human endeavors work. I was so sapped of the motivational energy (this is an actual thing, an actual, designated store of sugar in one’s cerebrum that is used to motivate intention, action, and strict adherence to plans) that the fact that my garden would never be perfect was enough reason to just keep neglecting it.
These are things I have to work on. But once I finally dedicated my time, effort, and motivation to actually weeding and planting my garden, it felt really good. Even if I don’t harvest as much as other years, this year’s garden represents a bit of deeper emotional growth. I chose to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good – nor the enemy of the garden – and with each tomato and pepper I eat, I will remember that lesson.
My column appears every other Sunday in The Woonsocket Call (also in areas where The Pawtucket Times is available). The above article is the property of The Woonsocket Call and The Pawtucket Times, and is reprinted here with permission from these publications. These are excellent newspapers, covering important local news topics with voices out of our own communities, and skillfully addressing statewide and national news. Click these links to subscribe to The Woonsocket Call or to The Pawtucket Times. To subscribe to the online editions, click here for The Call and here for The Times. They can also be found on Twitter, @WoonsocketCall and @Pawtuckettimes.