ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 4, 1993                   TAG: 9301040241
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S.  LEITCH  (staff)
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A GARDENER GONE TO SEED

THE FIRST seed catalog came last week. I leafed through it longingly, pretending that this year I'd have aromatic herb gardens, perennial borders, patches of four o'clocks and salvia to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. I savored the names of all those "boy" tomatoes: Better Boy, Bigger Boy, Pretty Boy. I envisaged the elegance of cucumbers arranged in a basket next to sugar snap peas, the glory of golden pumpkins.

Then I passed the catalog on to someone who might actually plant a bean or two.

I used to have gardens. Never as spectacular in reality as in my dreams, but ambitious nonetheless. Rows of snap beans, peas and radishes. Carefully staked tomatoes. Mounds that promised squash and cucumbers enough to feed an army.

I rhapsodized each spring re: potential, promise, the miracle of growth. I spent a couple of glorious days thrusting my hands in dirt.

But then I pretty much went on about my business, expecting the gardens to take care of themselves.

You see, I have a poet's knowledge of farming: gardening as bucolic pastime; gardening as amusement, diversion, avocation. Gardening accomplished in pale lawn-dresses and ribboned hats, gardening with burgeoning baskets of melons, and sweet little bunnies nestled in the shade.

That's not what gardening's like, of course. Nor is that what bunnies do in your garden. They don't nestle. The word is "ravage" or "graze," but not "nestle."

Oh, well. Let's not blame the bunnies for what was ever my fault. I'm much too lazy to be a real farmer, much too hedonistic for honest earthly stewardship. That's really why I no longer have a garden. Fresh tomatoes are awfully nice, but not so nice that I'm willing to do the work.

I know it should be obvious that if food plants are going to grow in a patch of dirt, then weeds are going to grow there, too. But, honestly, I was astonished the first time this happened to me.

I mean, I'd prepared the dirt. There wasn't a single weed showing when I lined out my nice little rows of peas and beans. The vegetables came up first, too.

But then all this other stuff appeared. "You want me to hoe your garden for you?" the man of the house politely asked me one evening.

"Hoe it?" I said. "What for?"

That's the kind of gardener I am. I had beautiful cucumber hills another year. So beautiful that when the grasshoppers got in them, I decided to spray. The next day, my cucumbers shriveled up and died. Because I'd used weed killer against those grasshoppers. Who lived to hop for weeks. That's the kind of gardener I am.

So I look at the seed catalogs when they arrive, and I get big ideas. But then, wisely, I pass the catalogs on. There are others here who know how to grow tomatoes. I know how to run the lawn mower. That's the kind of honest earth steward I am.

\ AUTHOR Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist. 




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