Chaos Gardening

This morning, I spent a good long while in my garden, tying up straying tomato vines and staking some peppers that had fallen over in a recent thunderstorm. My stakes were pieces of bamboo of random widths and lengths, and I didn't have enough to stake every plant. I had to figure out which ones were strong enough to make it on their own for now and give the weakest ones a bit more help.

I also had three little girls under three with me, one squealing in a bumbo chair and the other two running around in and out of the kiddie pools, causing all manner of chaos by running off with my pepper stakes and waving them like swords.

I found the girls each a cucumber and some blueberries. Then later, when we were sitting in the grass looking up thru the bean trellis, I saw a sugar snap vine that apparently escaped death at the hand of my snippers. It was still growing up among the lima beans, shaded by the heat, and the girls were glad to get some peas again.

Louisiana is a brutal place to garden, and someone said once that you have to remember that the south wants to be a forest and use that to your advantage. My garden truly has just evolved into a mini jungle over the past two years. Gardens do take on the personality of the gardener it seems, and there's a lot of life out there most of the time, but it's pretty chaotic.

For one thing, I love to save seeds. Right now I have various bolted cilantro bushes in full bloom, many falling over out of the beds or onto other plants and causing all manner of chaos.

Saving seeds also means many volunteer plants. I'm a sucker for anything that shows a will to grow. I welcome volunteers, and I also tend to sow seed often and with a heavy hand, so my garden is full of surprises. I tend to let them grow, as long they play well with their neighbors. A cosmos may get cut down and used to mulch a tomato, but I try to give it a change to burst into bright yellow gloriousness first.

My goal is to master the art of year round gardening. I just want to be able to go out on any given morning with my coffee, see something beautiful, and pick something delicious. In January, it's probably going to be only a bunch or herbs or collard greens, but I can admire tiny purple lettuce among the garlic and the feathery carrot tops.

In the summer, I truly do let the garden be a jungle. I let green beans run along under my pepper plants. Pumpkins and southern peas spill out of the beds and cause issues when mowing. I plant tough weedlike plants such as Everglades tomatoes that defy pruning. My okra gets gangly and my eggplants sag a bit, like mothers who have born many children.

It is my garden, and I love it and all its chaos. My favorite place to sit at the moment is on the edge of a bed clear at one end. There is burgandy okra in the back, then a whole fence line of tomato craziness, and herbs and flowers in front. I can see so many plants from my spot, beautiful malibar spinach and yard long beans just starting to climb an arch trellis, a hidden yellow okra flower, too many green tomatoes to count, and yellow banana peppers. Right in my face is a patch of feathery fragrant dill. Chaos meets abundance.

Then I look at my life and wonder if I'm willing to be the strong and steady okra or sunflower stem that gives an overexuberant cherry tomato vine a place to lean on and rejoice with the Gardener at the clusters of yellow fruit. I can bloom later, and my flowers will be beautiful to Him too. I wonder if I'm willing to be the pepper plant forced to fight with the wind alone while someone else gets a stake. Do I have courage like the carrot that germinated way too late to keep growing toward the light, tho the way seems solidly blocked by an eggplant who had a large head start?

There are some wicked little things called squash vine borers out here in my garden. If you're a squash, they burrow under your skin and lay their eggs just as your first little tiny fruit starts to grow. My less determined squash have given up already. The only ones left are the babies I faithfully sow every few weeks in hopes that one will survive, and the unbeatable green striped cushaw squash. Those crazy curcubits are running all over the place right now, putting roots down every few feet. The borers can never quite take them out because even tho parts of the stem are destroyed, there are always roots to guarantee the plant will survive.

South Louisiana is a place with stink bugs, drought, days of beating sun followed by thunderstorms. Sometimes the hardest of all is meeting the business end of a bright red pruning shears. Sometimes it seems like God has planted other gardens with careful, neat rows in places with the perfect combination of sunny days and rain. Some people literally look like they're growing in a greenhouse. But out here where I am, it's a bit wild most of the time. Survival of the fittest, you might say.

But does the Gardener think that chaos is just another word for delightful surprises? Less than ideal circumstances are maybe opportunities for extraordinary beauty. Determination to hang on is just hope for abundant harvest. I think in the end, God always rewards the ones who are determined to grow.

And friend, I just want to tell you, if you are a chaotic gardener, or you feel like you're planted in a chaotic garden, you are not alone.