Plant and maintain a small garden for a season.

“Questions continued to pile up: Had I planted the rhubarb too deep? The peas too late? The new flower bed too near the street where salt from the town’s road crew would kill it come winter? What’s an inoculant and what, precisely, does sprinkle “generously” mean on the inoculant package? Was that a weed? And that? It turned out I like to weed. I like to water, too. And rake and plant. But I loathe, and lack all talent for, building stuff. Who knew how much carpentry a garden requires? My garden – such as it is – needs a trellis for the peas and fences for the raised beds.”

“My friend and I loaded up and made 3 round trips, pulled into my backyard and unloaded each time, put together cedar rectangles, wheel-barrowed bags of soil to those rectangles, and dumped them in one bag at a time. As the day wore on and my muscles fatigued I’d slam the bags of soil into the wheelbarrow, gravity would take over, and then the wheelbarrow would take off with a shaky, pale, 30-something woman tearing off behind it. After 140 excruciatingly dense bags of this, I was beginning to rethink this whole garden “adventure” and my friend was rethinking her friendship with me.”

“When I have shown it to visiting friends and family this summer, I have heard the air quotes in my voice around the word “garden.” “The garden, such as it is…” I find myself saying or trailing “garden” with “a work in progress.” For now, it consists of one small and unexceptional flower bed; one raised bed with rhubarb and strawberries; two weedy, neglected raised beds; one herb bed with thriving chives, bolting dill, and basil that is on intimate terms with a slug; two pots of productive but afflicted tomatoes (Septoria Leaf Spot, if my Internet diagnosis is correct); a wee dogwood tree that nonetheless came with the breathtaking price tag of $100; and many flourishing, inherited daylilies.”