When we moved into this house in April, all we wanted was to start a garden.
We were so eager to get started, we built planters and organized soil delivery. We knew that we were only guaranteed to stay in this house about 6 months, but we decided to give gardening our best shot anyways.
When we moved in it was spring, and the leaves had not yet grown in. We cleared beds, made new ones, we ordered soil (far too much of it, unfortunately), and we planted our seeds.
All the while, I am continuously reminded of that saying, “to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”.
In our case we were planting a garden with the hopes that we’d be at the house long enough to reap the fruits of our labour. We knew our living arrangement was a short-term one, but we followed through with our goals and we planted the damn garden!
As the spring months transitioned slowly into summer, the trees around the property started growing in heavier and heavier. We watched as our dreams of a prosperous harvest faded deeper and deeper into the shadows. Our seedlings sprouted! But not much more… Between raccoons and skunks eating our dwindled crops, and the reality that there was not nearly enough sunlight to grow 95% of the veggies we intended to grow, we inevitably lost interest, and gardening became just another thing we had to do in our already busy lives.
Today is a big day, we are once again moving to a new house in Vancouver. It is a bittersweet, to say the least, as we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time at this house. We are also very much excited to start a new adventure of making a new house into a home! So as i started shovelling dirt, trying to deconstruct the garden bed we put so much time into making, i noticed a little orange nub sticking out. It was in-fact a carrot. Not just any carrot, this carrot was a fine specimen, perfect orange with a divine tapered shape, from its bulbous head to its elegant stringer root. It was the perfect carrot! Except for one distinct feature… it was about 1/8 of the size of a regular carrot.
Excitedly I started rummaging through the dirt for others like it, i found multiple mini’s, each as exciting as the next. I decided to go and check the beds on the north side of the house, where they received more sunlight. More carrots, but these carrots were BIGGER.
I’m talking like 1/4 of the size of a regular carrot, so you can imagine my excitement! I shook off the remaining dirt from a deliciously red carrot and shoved its end promptly into my mouth to take a bite.
The sweetness of the carrot coloured my tastebuds in warm hues of delight and satisfaction as i minded the dirt crunching between my teeth. How many others like it? About 8… I took them to the kitchen to wash and put on display for when Hannah was to return. Today we feasted on the fruits of our labour. We feasted on the optimism and initiative of our past selves. It certainly didn’t fill our stomachs, but for that brief moment in time it filled our hearts, and that is enough.
