2024 April 11 And We’ve Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden

 

My patio in 2010 after two years of gardening in Teustepe, Nicaragua in the Peace Corps.

The garden is calling me. It has always been calling me. In third grade, my best friend Sarah Preedy and I started a garden. She lived in a century home at the end of the street with a ravine on one side and a cliff down to a decent sized cree I in the back. Her parents were from England; her mom a Botanist, and her dad a pilot. Summers at Sarah’s house were idyllic, exploring creeks with plants blooming all over. One summer her mom let us use a little clearing in the woods for a garden. We popped in some bulbs and seeds that barely grew in the shade, but the process of it all was enchanting. 

Our city had a rose garden that Mrs. Preedy tended. As Sarah got older, her summer job was to help her mom. I’d ride my bike up, and it was clear from then on that Sarah would not choose the career path of her mom. She cursed out the thistles as she weeded. Sarah eventually became a pilot like her dad. 

Later, while I was away in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua, I found out that Mrs. Preedy had brain cancer and passed away quickly. It was that same time period that I started my first real garden. I wish I could tell Mrs. Preedy how much her gardens inspired me.

In the small town of Teustepe, Nicaragua I had a little “bodega” that I turned back into a house. It actually was a church at one time, so there was a clear cement altar where my bed went. There was running water sometimes from a spicket in the back that attached to the dishes/laundry sink, and my shower was made by galvanized metal pieces back there too. The “yard”, which was sloping and had a latrine at the top, looked like the surface of the moon.

My patio in Teustepe, Nicaragua when I moved in 2008.

After a while of throwing my table scraps out the back door, I noticed plants started to grow. All of a sudden I had a pepper plant and a tomato plant going. Unfortunately that first “garden” got eaten one night by semi-wild hogs, but it set me in motion to plant more. By the end of the 27 months in Nicaragua, I had a full, lush back patio filled with hot pink and orange bougainvillea, bright tall zinnias, and more species of butterflies than I could count. I had a papaya tree that produced fruit in 9 months, so I had a little football sized fruit every morning. Pepper plants became perpetual pepper trees and Malabar spinach grew so fast up the side of my house that it pulled my patio roof down with the weight. Since then, I’ve been an avid gardener. 

2009. Butterflies all over my yard in Teustepe, Nicaragua.