{"id":22881,"date":"2024-05-29T16:50:22","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T20:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/?p=22881"},"modified":"2024-05-30T15:22:51","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T19:22:51","slug":"in-the-garden-in-the-cool-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2024\/05\/in-the-garden-in-the-cool-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Garden, In the Cool of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
image via Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
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It was finally the cool of the day.<\/p>\n
I was hoping for rain. It\u2019s now summer, meteorologically at least. Summer is full of heartbreak for a gardener in Steubenville. When it\u2019s summer, the air swells with hot water as if you\u2019re trapped in a steam room\u2013 hotter and more humid, still hotter and more humid. There is, invariably, between thirty and fifty percent chance of a good soaking rain to pop the bubble of humidity. That\u2019s not enough to bank on.<\/p>\n
It had rained weirdly for about an hour in the afternoon, and then it stopped, making everything steamier than ever. I was coming down with a cold, which meant I was exhausted. I was just going to step out to check on the garden for a minute, but then\u00a0I heard the squeaking of rusted scooter wheels.<\/p>\n
There was Jimmy\u2019s boy. He\u2019d brought two new children with him: living rag dolls with curly hair and big excited eyes, a boy a little younger than he and a girl a little older. Jimmy\u2019s boy knows all the children up and down the block. I can rarely keep track of any of them, but I was sure I hadn\u2019t seen these two before. They looked at the garden in equal parts apprehension and delight, as if it was a portal to Narnia that had just opened up at the back of the wardrobe.<\/p>\n
Jimmy\u2019s boy asked if they could pick a bag of strawberries. The children turned their shocked gaze to him, and then to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said, sitting heavily on the porch, and Adrienne ran to get them grocery bags.<\/p>\n
The children had never hand-harvested anything to eat before. It took another moment for them to get over their confusion; then they were trampling through the strawberry patch with Jimmy\u2019s boy and Lady Mcfluff, filling their bags. I warned them that the green ones were too sour, but they didn\u2019t believe me until they\u2019d each tried one themselves. They each took half a bag from the garden and several handfuls from the strainer full of strawberries I still had in the fridge.<\/p>\n
The children wanted to know about the other things I had planted there. I gave them a little tour. \u201cThis is my compost heap. That\u2019s like a recycling center for lawn clippings and vegetable trash. It breaks down the old food and turns it into fertilizer, and it puts carbon back into the soil. These are my onions; they\u2019re almost ready. You can smell them if you get close! These beautiful flowers will be peas next week. They\u2019re the best kind of peas. They\u2019re the kind you eat raw without taking the shells off. These are tomatoes, I have six vines, but some volunteer tomatoes grew up out of the compost as well, so there\u2019ll be more. These will be zucchini. I\u2019m going to wrap the bottoms of the plants with foil soon to keep the borers off. This is a surprise squash that grew out of the compost, so I don\u2019t know what kind of squash it will be yet. This is a wall of sunflowers. By late summer, they\u2019ll be as big as a\u00a0 fence and in five different colors! Some of them will be tall as you, some will be tall as me, and some will be tall as the house! And these tiny things are going to get gigantic. They\u2019re watermelons. We should have a watermelon by the time you go back to school. And this? This is a barrel of potatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just then Jimmy\u2019s voice rang out from down the block, searching for his boy. The children took up their scooters and scooted away.<\/p>\n
They were back a minute later with the best compliment imaginable. \u201cJimmy says we can stay here. He says you\u2019re good people.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had achieved Appalachian \u201cGood People\u201d status.<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t lived here, you can\u2019t understand how important it is to be Good People and to know who else is Good People. If you\u2019re trapped in an underserved neighborhood in a small town in Appalachia, nobody is coming to save you. Neighbors have to take care of each other. You live or die by knowing whether the people around you are kindly and honest folks you can trust in a pinch, or that other kind of person, the kind who will make everything worse. I\u2019ve suffered a lot<\/a> for not being able to judge the difference. I\u2019ve started to discover the neighborhood Good People and \u201cbad people,\u201d which has made life a lot better. And now here I was, being called \u201cGood People.\u201d A trustworthy person. Somebody the neighbors knew they could let their children visit unattended.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have anything we can help you plant?\u201d asked the little girl.<\/p>\n
I ran and got the last package of sunflower seeds from the front hall\u2013 the Mammoth sunflowers, the ones that can tower like trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese,\u201d I said solemnly, as I dug three little holes with my finger, \u201cWill grow twelve feet tall by the time you\u2019re back in school. They\u2019ll have bright yellow flowers with centers as big as a plate. Birds and butterflies will come to land on them, and we\u2019ll leave the dead stalks up into the fall as bird feeders.\u201d<\/p>\n
The children planted their Mammoth seeds, reverently, as if they were performing a magic spell.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I have some water?\u201d<\/p>\n
Adrienne came out with three glasses of water, which they didn\u2019t drink. The children used the glasses to water my sunflowers for me, while I sat on the porch and caught my breath again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to come visit the garden every time I see you go outside,\u201d promised the girl.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t leave until it was almost dark.<\/p>\n
That night, it really rained. It\u2019s rained for days and cooled the world down to bearable again.<\/p>\n
More than bearable: the world was good.<\/p>\n
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Mary Pezzulo is the author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross,\u00a0<\/a>The Sorrows an<\/a>d Joys of Mary<\/a>, and\u00a0Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
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Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to \u201cThe Little Portion\u201d on\u00a0paypal<\/a>\u00a0or Mary Pezzulo on\u00a0venmo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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*\u00a0 It was finally the cool of the day. I was hoping for rain. It\u2019s now summer, meteorologically at least. Summer is full of heartbreak for a gardener in Steubenville. When it\u2019s summer, the air swells with hot water as if you\u2019re trapped in a steam room\u2013 hotter and more humid, still hotter and more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":22887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1165],"tags":[24,13,366,15309,4694,9588],"class_list":["post-22881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-appalachia","category-gardening","tag-appalachia","tag-children","tag-garden","tag-good-people","tag-strawberries","tag-sunflowers"],"yoast_head":"\nIn the Garden, In the Cool of the Day<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I was just going to step out to check on the garden for a minute, but then\u00a0I heard the squeaking of rusted scooter wheels.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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