Derick Black
Last October a co-worker and I were discussing gardening when I had mentioned I wanted to grow garlic. His response was, “Now’s the time! Get some bulbs in the ground before the first hard frost.” So, with limited knowledge but a head full of “You bet you can,” I headed to the garden and prepared an area for the garlic bulbs, planted them a few inches deep, then covered the bed with a healthy amount of mulch. With mud beneath my nails and hope in my heart, I walked away from the garden. By 8:00 that night I had forgotten all about the garlic because there were pumpkins to carve.
February of 2020 turned out to be one filled with personal and international headlines. Personally, I was home recovering from shoulder surgery and transitioning to life in a recliner. Internationally, the world was transitioning to life with a new, deadly virus. Like most in the insulated midwest I watched the headlines with a drop of growing concern but was more focused on the snowmelt, the deadfall sticks in my yard, and the prospect of raking with only one arm. After the evil joke that was the winter of 2019, I found my spirits rising with the mercury in the thermometer and the waters in the rivers. A deadly virus is serious stuff, but so is a pair of mating robins and a snow-free yard before the first of March.
Then things got real.
COVID in Wisconsin. COVID in Eau Claire. Seed catalogues in the mail.
I tend to read seed catalogues like science fiction. There is a significant amount of suspension of disbelief as I read vegetable names and assign protagonist or antagonist roles to each one. The good guys: Imperial Star Artichoke, Jersey Giant Asparagus, Baby Wrinkles Pumpkin. The bad guys: Annihilator Bush Bean, Redhawk Cabbage, Delta Yellow Crookneck Squash. I buy them all with hope of bountiful fall harvest. I’ll plant this spring with a hope for the unknown. May the best vegetable win.
Last week I took advantage of unseasonably warm weather and walked to the garden to survey the land, take stock of the work to be done, and dream. Standing like soldiers were greyed stalks of corn overlooking bent tomato cages and a colorless cucumber left in the weeds. I knelt in the dirt and with my good arm reached in and let the soil break apart in my fingers. Cold and loamy, I held the material that would soon cradle the seeds. But something to my left caught my eye and broke my reverie. There, poking through the mulch were the pale green tops of garlic. Anemic and fragile, somehow, through the cold and harsh winter, they found a way to slowly reach skyward - into the oncoming spring and beyond.
Derick Black is a Middle School Language Arts teacher in Eau Claire.