Several years ago, I wrote my personal declaration against the Dictatorship of Perfectionism, "The 80% Manifesto." (Check it out, here.) I've got to say it's one thing to know something to be true, and quite another to live by that truth. I battle perfectionism every single day. And a lot of the time, we're talking epic, Godzilla-Mothra battles. Sometimes I win, but it's never easy.
MY GARDEN RULES
So when I decided to start a garden, I broke down my expectations to what seemed to me to be the most basic premise I could find:
THE SEEDS IN THE GROUND
ARE MORE LIKELY TO GROW THAN
THE SEEDS THAT STAY IN THE PACKET
I know that idea seems really obvious, but it's where I wanted (and needed) to start. It's more like a Garden in the Land of 2%, I know. But it felt FUN to me. And I really, really wanted it to be fun.
THE OTHER THING: DON'T SPEND (MUCH) MONEY
That one is for a few different reasons. One, if I spent money, that would make me feel like I needed to raise my expectations from where I started. Also, I don't have a lot of money. And spending money I don't have feels stressful. Which means NOT as fun. And this garden = fun. I had nothing to lose, and I wanted to keep it that way.
THE GARDEN STATE
A lot of people don't quite believe that New Jersey is called the "Garden State" with good reason. But it's not a joke. It's for real. Every single one of the hundreds of tomatoes I ate growing up testified to this very simple fact: there is dirt, and then there is soil.
The rock solid red clay my mother encountered our first fall in North Carolina when she tried to plant tulips -- that’s dirt. She picked and scraped away a few scant inches before she dropped the bulbs into the shallow holes in disgust. That spring, tiny tulips -- about a third of the size promised by the garden catalogue -- poked their pitiful little heads out of the dirt. Those tulips were a family joke for a long time, even after my mother and father had dug up a little patch in the backyard to grow tomatoes, zucchini, and some lettuce. They brought in layers and layers of organic material to coax some kind of soil out of the dirt.
In northern New Jersey, we have soil -- dark brown, almost black, crumbly, with a deep murky smell that conjures life and decay all at once. It is soft and it sticks to your knees if you have been weeding or picking fresh lettuce, or on your pants' bottoms if you’ve been hiding among the plants listening to the grown-ups talk nearby. My mother grew up on the same land as her father, and I lived in the house she grew up in until I was eight years old. His family had farmed the land that now made up a good block of houses, bordered by Stiles Street on one side and Harding Avenue on the other. My PopPop, my grandfather, Saraphino “Ed” Truncale, received an exemption from serving in WWII in order to grow food for his country, but he joined the Army anyway. He was sent to Germany, and that is where he met Johanna Bimbose, my Oma, my grandmother.
My Oma grew up hungry. So the garden meant so many different things at once. We were fed. We were loved. We were never -- could never -- be hungry at her table. Not if she had anything to do with it.
The rock solid red clay my mother encountered our first fall in North Carolina when she tried to plant tulips -- that’s dirt. She picked and scraped away a few scant inches before she dropped the bulbs into the shallow holes in disgust. That spring, tiny tulips -- about a third of the size promised by the garden catalogue -- poked their pitiful little heads out of the dirt. Those tulips were a family joke for a long time, even after my mother and father had dug up a little patch in the backyard to grow tomatoes, zucchini, and some lettuce. They brought in layers and layers of organic material to coax some kind of soil out of the dirt.
In northern New Jersey, we have soil -- dark brown, almost black, crumbly, with a deep murky smell that conjures life and decay all at once. It is soft and it sticks to your knees if you have been weeding or picking fresh lettuce, or on your pants' bottoms if you’ve been hiding among the plants listening to the grown-ups talk nearby. My mother grew up on the same land as her father, and I lived in the house she grew up in until I was eight years old. His family had farmed the land that now made up a good block of houses, bordered by Stiles Street on one side and Harding Avenue on the other. My PopPop, my grandfather, Saraphino “Ed” Truncale, received an exemption from serving in WWII in order to grow food for his country, but he joined the Army anyway. He was sent to Germany, and that is where he met Johanna Bimbose, my Oma, my grandmother.
My Oma grew up hungry. So the garden meant so many different things at once. We were fed. We were loved. We were never -- could never -- be hungry at her table. Not if she had anything to do with it.
OFF THE VINE
I wrote this poem -- "Off the Vine" -- many years ago, and read it at my PopPop's funeral. I think it gets at why planting this garden felt so important to me. And why I wanted to keep it simple. I didn't want anything to do with my garden to make me feel bad or embattled. I wanted a garden that felt like how my grandparents saw me, which had nothing to do with being perfect. Now that both PopPop and Oma have passed over, I wanted to create a space that reminded me of what it felt like to be nurtured by their love, and to see if maybe I could shine some of that light on myself.
THE RAMAPO
My PopPop grew all different kinds of tomatoes -- a whole slew of vegetables, actually. But the Ramapo stuck in my mind. A couple of years ago I tried to find out if the seeds were still available, and I saw that Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, had recently reissued the seeds. That year, my Uncle Ed, who lives in New Jersey, ordered the seeds and planted them. Uncle Ed sent us photos via group text messages and we all watched as the tomato plants grew. When we came to visit, and eating those tomatoes became it's own kind of holy ritual.
So this year, I went online, and ordered seeds! And not just tomatoes!
GARDEN BUDGET: 4/11/17: Seeds, $16.62
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Woah. OK, breathe. Just remember: Seeds out of the packet and into the ground. That's all we agreed to when we started this garden. Don't start freaking out. If something grows, that's a total bonus!
SMALL STEPS
A really amazing friend of mine, Eri Yokoyama wanted to be an animator, but she didn't know how to draw. So she decided to teach herself how to draw by engaging in daily practice sessions, about 30 minutes each. She also completely lowered her expectations, and took a super-playful and funny approach to her learning process. (Learn more about her awesome project,and see the final animation, here.)
With my low/no expectation garden, I also wanted to cultivate a daily practice. To do something, the smallest possible thing, every day. It could be more, but just one thing would rank as a success.
With my low/no expectation garden, I also wanted to cultivate a daily practice. To do something, the smallest possible thing, every day. It could be more, but just one thing would rank as a success.
My garden looks nothing like this grid, and I didn't follow any of these instructions. But I had fun playing around with all the garden tools online. I just couldn't let myself start worrying about doing something right, or it might stop me from doing anything at all.
COMING UP NEXT: I LOVE TO DIG + WHAT ELSE I LEARNED BEFORE I PLANTED ANYTHING
Gardening by Moonlight
And off I go!
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