006: Just Tend Your Garden

Didion, Berry, Abbey, mothering, gardening & magical thinking

Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.

—Tony Hoagland, from “Self-Improvement”

About a hundred years ago last April, as the sixth month of winter snow fell softly and beautifully outside of my house and the sixth week of the pandemic kept me softly and beautifully inside of my house, I came up with the idea of expanding my garden during the coming summer. It might not have been very original, but it just made sense—the same way that things like sourdough bread baking and watching Normal People and then cutting your own quarantine bangs made sense.

And so, in May, when I spotted a ‘for sale’ listing for an odd lot of 4 inch by 4 inch by 8 foot cedar boards, I saw my opportunity: I would build a raised-bed kitchen garden.

A great deal of problem-solving and money-spending ensued, enough to really keep me going through the entire month of May. Stuff was sold out in stores, sure, but that was jus…