One of the challenges of living in the city is the lack of space. Living in the city necessitates this reality, but it doesn't reduce our desire to experiment in urban gardening. I was lucky to grow up in South Carolina, with parents and grandparents who valued the importance of gardening and preservation. Cultivating soil in the city, though, doesn't look even remotely similar to plowing the red clay of Winnsboro. For Jenny and me, it means experimenting with potted gardens, varying pot sizes, and certain crops that thrive in the urban environment. After our first summer living in Jamaica Plain, we have discovered the thrill of gardening in growing tomatoes, bell peppers, and flowers. Unfortunately for us, the peppers did not produce due to an error on our part. We forgot to drain the pepper pot, and, as a result, the soil became over watered and the pepper plants died. Our Better Boy tomatoes, however, were a little more successful, producing between 10 and 15 tomatoes. The tomatoes started out thriving, but have succumbed to the heavy rains we've gotten throughout the summer. It doesn't look like any more fruit will grow, but it leaves us very hopeful for the future of our small, potted garden. For the fall and winter months, we're excited to plant spinach and other leafy greens, hoping that the cool climate of New England will treat them well.
Jenny and I have been challenged recently by a collection of essays on agrarian economy by Wendell Berry, entitled The Art of the Commonplace. In one essay, Berry writes about the appreciation of sun and rain, and how this appreciation is magnified by our participation in gardening:
A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us. He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure. But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as an impediment of traffic, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration. And his sense of man's dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be politically clarifying and useful. (88-89)
Thus, we've set ourselves to be less exploitative, and more preserving, in our perspective. This idea of stewardship runs deep, not only in our desire to grow vegetables and flowers, but also in our desire to live in this city in a way that spawns redemption and restoration through the gospel.
