Victory Garden

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The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.

To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.

— Alfred Austin

I set out to plant my garden this year as a quest – as some sort of proof that Mother Nature is not out to get us. I needed to get my hands in the dirt and remember that nature is powerful in its beauty and mighty in its magic. Also, to try and forget that nature can be cruel, given our current pandemic.

But, planting a garden this year was more complicated than in previous years. Usually, I just went to Lowe’s and bought some plants. Easy. However, with the pandemic upon us, I had so many more considerations: When should I go to the store? When would there be the least amount of people there? Should I go in the morning when they have just sanitized? What about wearing a mask and gloves?

I waited a long time. The fear was too much, and I was paralyzed with worry. Finally, I decided to stop spinning and just get to it! I asked my husband to go with me at 6am when Lowe’s opened. I had my list and we grabbed up plants with breakneck speed. No hemming and hawing over what would look good, or what is full or partial sun? Just grabbed and paid, adorned with our masks and gloves.

I felt so much better after tackling that hurdle that I planted the whole garden and all of the flower pots as soon as we got home. It was therapeutic to get my fingers into the soil as I lovingly patted down the new plantings. Yes. I admit it. I talk to my plants. My kids made fun of me as I wished all of my flowers, herbs and vegetables the best on their growth journey. I also thanked the worms for helping my plants to grow; while the sun kept me warm and the songbirds created background music.

The dirt under my fingernails was like a badge of honor and a tribute to my mom. I remember Mom planting gardens when I was growing up. She was also a member of the Garden Club. She loved the earth and all of the harvests she planted. As I admired my little garden, I thought about a recent conversation with a friend about people working in their yards more during this pandemic. She called them victory gardens.

When she said ‘victory garden’, it brought back memories of social studies classes when I first heard the term. The idea of a victory garden stemmed from pervasive food shortages in Europe during World War I and World War II. Americans planted gardens and shipped their bounties to European citizens to help. Their horticultural efforts were also enormously beneficial stateside. “An estimated twenty million World War II Victory Gardens produced nearly forty percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables” (Smith).

Companies during war time found that victory gardening held several benefits for their employees. The act of planting communal gardens boosted employees’ morale during a very difficult time in our country’s history. Coming together for a common goal gave citizens purpose and helped with depression amidst the backdrop of two world wars.

In 1944, manufacturing companies started victory garden programs to help with absenteeism. In a newspaper article from February 1944, a reporter wrote, “One way a company can help make workers happy and more contented, thus reducing absenteeism and turnover, is to encourage victory gardening. The food will come in handy this year, too. The answer is that victory gardening pays. The man who gets comfortably tired at weeding over Sunday won’t get down to work with a hangover on Monday. The fellow with a thrifty garden underway won’t readily quit his job and leave the crop for someone else. Closer friendships and associations – not only among employees but their families as well – create a wholesome spirit that makes for better all-around labor conditions” (Heuchling).

Victory gardens did not stop after World War II. In fact, during the 2008 economic crisis, gardens sprouted up due to the rising rate of unemployment. People found that growing their own food was not only cost effective, but a good way to get healthy, organic produce for their families. Some people continue to plant bee gardens – gardens that are specifically designed to increase the honeybee population that is at risk of extinction due to climate change.

There is no doubt that victory gardens have a storied history combining love for the earth and benefit of humankind. I found a great deal of comfort planting our little garden and an added bonus? We planted it on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Who knew? The days all blend together in this quarantine, but there must have been some cosmic pull to getting that garden planted on that day.

After Charlotte made the national news as the “#1 location to watch” for a COVID 19 surge, I remain scared, but resolute. This garden helps me stay productive and positive as it is teaching me mindfulness, patience and hope.

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

– Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

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Citations:

Heuchling, Fred. “‘Gardens That Raise Morale.’” Nation’s Business, Feb. 1944.

Smith, Tracy. “‘Victory Gardens for the War Against COVID 19.’” CBS Sunday Morning, CBS, 5 Apr. 2020.

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As mothers and daughters, we are connected to one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart.

-Kristin Hannah

Mom would have been 79 years old today.

I was feeling melancholy, remembering her special day would be coming and I found myself thinking about her hands.

Mom’s hands were strong. She could open up any jar in the house. She was a dental hygienist for 40 years, so her hands were battle worn. They worked in tight places all day long with sharp instruments and lifted heavy x-ray aprons.

Her strong hands were the only ones I wanted to rub my back when I was sick. When I had severe asthma growing up, her hands would pound on my back. This was not an abusive situation. These were the 1970s where there were no inhalers like we use today. Mom’s hands methodically thumped on my back to release the pressure in my lungs and allowed me to breathe.

One day in elementary school, my teacher called me “dummy”. Although this condemnation would hurt any child’s feelings, the wound was deeper because I had always liked this teacher for her hands. They were like my mother’s. When I cried that night in my mother’s arms, I remember her saying, “No, honey. Our hands are different. Mine are the ones that are smacking her in the face for saying such a thing to a child.” Always the fierce Irish mother.

I am not the only one that reveres her mother’s hands. Fanny Singer, daughter of renowned chef Alice Waters, recounts memories of her mother’s hands in her memoir, Always Home:

“One of the most distinctive things about my mother is her hands, though I would imagine that the hands of anyone’s mother would seem distinctive to them. Those are the hands, after all, that soothe us through so much of our childhood, that change our diapers, and swaddle us and hold us, and comb our hair, and apply unwanted sunscreen and antiseptic and band-aids.”

Singer also commented about the strength of her mother’s hands, “But, there is also something in the strength of her fingers – whether it is innate or from the years of kitchen work – that I find especially unusual. In this, her hands are a sort of mirror of her determination.”

The author’s reverence for her beloved mother’s hands are surprisingly the same as mine: “But if there’s a portrait of my mother’s hands that is most etched in my mind, it is the way she holds a piece of fruit as she deftly slips the skin from its flesh….The finger-feel, the knowledge in her fingertips, strikes me a singular, though I know it is the gift of many chefs: determining the difference between lusciously yielding flesh and a fruit that is over the hill.”

My mother and I had similar hands and feet. A bit of useless trivia, for sure. But when we were in hospice with Mom and the nurse asked us to continuously check to see if her hands or feet were turning blue – that would be an indication that the end was near- I couldn’t help seeing my own hands and feet. Part of me was dying in that bed right along with her.

That scene lead me to write this poem:

Heartbeat (Hands, Feet in Drumbeat)

Same hands,

Kneading meatballs together

Same feet,

Walking in the sand

Same hands,

Waving goodbye, leaving for school

Same feet,

Strolling through London

Same hands,

Admiring wedding bands

Same feet,

Fatigued from dancing

Same hands,

Holding chubby baby hands

Same feet,

Running through the grass

Different hands,

Full of IVs

Different feet,

Running through the ICU

Different hands, Different feet,

Turning blue

Different hands, Different feet,

Saying this final farewell

Different hands, different feet

Different…

Happy birthday, Mom. I will miss you and love you forever. You and your beautiful hands.

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Excerpt from: Singer, Fanny. Always Home. Knopf, 2020.

Drawing: Special Bunny from Gail Adinolfi

RV Chronicles #4 – Travel Book

20191116_165526 “You can see a war out there, or you can see a friendly place. Or you can simply see and skip the words.”

-Charles Bowden, Some of the Dead are Still Breathing: Living in the Future

So, this story is not an RV chronicle, but it is RV adjacent.

We were in New York City for the weekend. Mark took the kids to an M&M store in Times Square. I opted to go to a large independent bookstore in Chelsea to be amongst my people. I love to go to independent bookstores because the staff are not only really friendly, but incredibly knowledgeable. I wanted to find a travel book based on RV adventures.

Although I didn’t find one, the person helping me showed me a book of essays entitled, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future by Charles Bowden. I loved the title, so I that was an easy sell. Then, she showed me some books by French authors traveling around the U.S. I bought the one that was most critical of America, as I love a little snarky adventure.

When I approached the cashier, he looked at me with disdain. It was as if he was saying with his eyes, Here she is. Another middle-aged white lady. What is the book of the day, ma’am? Ah, Meditations on Menopause? Good choice. It is a typical look and I have seen before. The NYC intellectual look, I call it. I usually wilt when I see this look as I still have an “also-ran” attitude when it comes to NYC. I am from Cortland, NY, which the New Yorkers view as basically, Canada. Definitely not New York. Although, as I have gotten older, I do not shrink much anymore. I met his gaze head on.

As he was ringing up my purchases, he grabbed the Bowden book and asked, wide-eyed, “Where did you get this?”. I looked around, my Catholic guilt showing, and said, “From the travel section?”. My statement was posed as a question because I was stunned by his. Then he asked, “Who gave you this book?”. This time, I stared him right in the eye and said, “Someone who works here.” In my mind I was thinking, Listen, Skippy. I don’t know what this is, but don’t try to pull anything on me. I’m a New Yorker, too. Upstate New Yorker.

I was relieved when he started gushing about the author. His love for Bowden’s work made me just happy to be alive. This kid went from sullen and dark, to sweet and puppy-ish in a matter of seconds. He said, “Oh, do you want a bag?” and I responded, “Yes, the tote bag that I picked out before.” He shook his head, apologized and blushed brightly like a Christmas ribbon.

I like to surprise people, and it’s even better when they surprise me.

When I left, I checked my Google Maps app. It looked like I had a 15 minute walk ahead of me to our hotel. No big deal. I started walking down Houston and then up 6th Avenue. It was so great to walk in the city and see real life in front of me – men playing basketball, old couples walking arm in arm, kids in strollers. Although it was only 33 degrees, I was feeling quite warm basking in the NY glow.

I had been walking for a good 20 minutes and my face was starting to sting from the cold air. I decided to double-check the hotel address. 827 6th Avenue, OK, and I am now at…..127. WHATTTTTT!! So, I misread Google Maps. The directions from before were for driving distance, not walking. I was in for a 60-minute walk. Ah, no big deal.

I kept an eye on the blocks as they rolled by – 200 block, 300 block….whew!!!

I got to the hotel feeling pretty good about myself. I had some cred after that walk, I tell you. I announced to the front desk staff that I just walked there from Little Italy. I got a lot of accolades and we laughed about my Google Maps guffaw.

I remembered such an important lesson after these two situations. Even though I am a control freak, I definitely enjoy the unexpected.

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Garden

20180614_171002 “What is called genius is the abundance of life or health, so that whatever addresses the senses, as the flavor of these berries, or the lowing of that cow, which sounds as if it echoed along a cool mountain-side just before night, where odiferous dews perfume the air and there is everlasting vigor, serenity, and expectation of perpetual untarnished morning,—each sight and sound and scent and flavor,—intoxicates with a healthy intoxication.”

Henry David Thoreau’s journal entry, 11 July 1852

There is a healthy intoxication in North Carolina during these sweltering days of summer. Farm stands abound with fresh produce and it is the time to try out new recipes. Each summer, my daughter and I plant a small garden in our backyard full of herbs and tomatoes.

I have been researching foods that help reduce inflammation associated with RA. My sister gave me an excellent resource, The Anti-Inflammatory Diet and Action Plans by Dorothy Calimeris and Sondi Bruner. I have found that some of my favorite foods/herbs (basil, strawberries, spinach, pineapple, cherries) might help with inflammation. My go-to fruit lately has been cherries, much to the delight of my Michigander husband.

I have been trying some of the recipes from my new cookbook and wanted to share some of them with you. I have been making a lot of smoothies lately. With temperatures rising to 100 degrees, something cold really hits the spot. This smoothie is my current obsession:

Cherry Smoothie, serves 1

1 cup of frozen, no sugar added, pitted cherries

¼ cup frozen raspberries

¾ cup coconut water

1 tbsp of raw honey (try to get local honey for the pollen, which helps with allergies)

1 tsp chia seeds

1 tsp hemp seeds

Drop of vanilla extract

Ice (optional)

In a blender, combine all ingredients until smooth.

So, I made this smoothie for my husband before one of my son’s soccer games. As he tasted it, he said, “is this alcoholic?” Umm… no? FYI…Watch how much vanilla extract you put in this smoothie. I misread the recipe and added a teaspoon of vanilla extract, not the drop that the recipe called for. It does taste alcoholic when you do that. Not bad, but definitely not the drink to have at a Saturday morning soccer game. Lesson learned.

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The next recipe is an unusual entree, but I promise you it is delectable! Again, I’m a little obsessed with cherries lately. They are just so sweet and fresh! I found this recipe for Chicken Breast with Cherry Sauce and my husband made it for me. It is unbelievably good, healthy and celebrates the abundance of the season:

Chicken Breast with Cherry Sauce, serves 4

1 tbsp coconut oil

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

2 scallions, sliced

¾ cup chicken broth

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

½ cup dried cherries (I used fresh cherries. They made for a little more liquid. See step #5 below.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit
In a large, ovenproof skillet over medium high heat, melt the coconut oil.
Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Place the chicken in the pan and brown it on both sides, about 3 minutes per side.
Add the scallions, chicken broth, balsamic vinegar and cherries. Cover with an ovenproof lid or aluminum foil and place the pan in the preheated oven. Bake for 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.
If you are using fresh or frozen cherries, transfer the sauce into a saucepan to reduce the liquid – making the sauce thicker before transferring back to chicken.

Exploring new recipes makes this transition exciting. I am able to find better ways to eat clean and preserve my health. Oh, and I also made Lavender and Honey homemade ice cream from the lavender in our garden. I won’t add that recipe. It was unbelievable, but definitely not anti-inflammatory or healthy. Sometimes you just have to indulge. And I was still honoring the abundance of our garden.

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