Fragments From Floyd

Maybe it is like the raking of a Zen garden, simplifying its lines and calming the mind. The garden bore no footprints when I had finished tilling it the second and final time last week, because I swung the handles of the tiller to the left or right at the beginning of each pass, and walked to the side, not in the smooth path the churning tines made in the sandy loam. This extra step made for a little more work, but because of this investment, no foot-shaped potholes would fill with rain to mar the perfect plane--a calm sea of soil that promises good fishing for what lies below its brown surface. Somehow, a garden freshly turned, free of blemishes in this way, is like a new school notebook, a freshly made bed, or the first page of a good book.

But on the morning after, graffiti scribbled across the beautiful page--deep cloven stabbing punctures led to the freshly-set tomato plants. Before I could replace the battery on the solar-powered fence charger, on the very first opportunity as we slept, the deer stepped through the wire and ate the growing tops out of the early variety I had chosen to increase our chances of a harvest before this cooler-than-usual summer is over. Maybe there are some growing tips left, but growing from the stumps of what remains, our time gained by the early variety is lost. Will we have tomatos enough for the table in July, or buy the product of someone else's success against deer, hornworms, wilt, and end rot?

Hills of Hubbard squash, a row of yellow straightneck, the first double row of green beans and first planting of Silver Queen--seeds wait out there even now in the dark, barely submerged, for warm nights, and the rains that have so far been missing from the gardener's calendar. And so there will be many trips between the garden rows and the creek with the green plastic watering can. Chop wood. Carry water. And hope. Another vegetable year has begun.