Blue Thumbs

This past weekend I mowed my lawn for the first time since last September. Some areas had a reasonable amount of grass, but other areas were ridiculously long and I had to mow over those areas three times before the vegetation was properly tamed. The long grass had grown through the winter and I felt sort of bad for cutting something down that had fought so hard to thrive during the bitterest part of the year. But it was starting to look silly, like an odd tuft of hair on an otherwise hairless scalp. So away it went.

I wish I could grow a garden like I was able to grow my grass. Last year, I planted a bunch of vegetables in pots and set them in my front yard. They began sprouting and producing very small versions of peppers and tomatoes and peas, until the sunlight they were receiving wasn’t enough. My yard is really shady (not drug-dealer shady, but tree-shade shady), and the vegetables were fine while they were small and getting an hour or two of sunlight per day, but they required a lot more as they began to grow.

What could I do? Chop down two trees that had already existed for half a century so that twenty tomatoes, six peppers and fifty peas could grow? I tried moving the pots into the traveling sunlight each day, but that became impractical since I wasn’t always home to move them. I eventually gave up and watched as my plants struggled to survive. The tomato plant did the best and ended up producing four tomatoes. The peas never did anything. The pepper plant spit out four baby peppers that approached adolescence before they decided it wasn’t worth the effort and they wasted away to nothing. It was sad and pitiful. Truth be told, my thumbs were very blue, instead of green as they should have been. But at least my grass was growing.

Too bad grass isn’t as nutritious as other plants. All of us would be saving money like mad grazing on our own lawns, rather than buying produce from the grocery store. But that’s the way life is: if you want something that is good for you, you’re going to have to work for it. I can’t just throw some seeds on dirt and hope that in three months I can harvest hundreds of vegetables. I’ve got to make sure there is plenty of sunlight, the right amount of water, maybe a little fertilizer to help things along, and, according to some, loving words of encouragement to help the plants feel self-worth so they want to grow up big and strong.

I think I’ll try again this year. My typical response to failure is, “If at first you don’t succeed, give up.” But I love watching plants grow, especially vegetable plants, and I won’t feel good about myself if I simply forget about trying to grow a garden again this year. My poor blue thumbs need a pick-me-up, and a successful plant or two is just what they need to become green again. Give me three months and we’ll see if I can’t apply what I learned from last year’s failure.