Optimistic asparagus -- and a hornet's nest

Yesterday, the day before a storm that felt like winter blew into our valley, I was watering the kitchen garden. It was election day, and despite my nervous excitement, I wasn't glued to the news. Hanging out and tending my plants--those that survived the last few hard freezes--is much more soothing than constantly pushing the "refresh" button on my internet browser to check for news. It was too early for election results, anyway.

So rather than making myself crazy staring at my electronic connection to the virtual larger world, I went outside into the real larger world--nature--and spent time in the garden.

I was giving the asparagus bed what may be its last soak for quite a while when I discovered that the plants which I wrote about in a post about optimistic gardeners last May have apparently decided it's spring all over again. The two largest clumps of asparagus have sprouted shoots as fat as my thumb, and one shoot is already several inches tall. Those asparagus plants think it's spring, not a few short weeks from winter.

The way the asparagus life cycle usually works, the roots, which are the larder storing the sugars produced with the previous summer's sunlight, send up shoots as the soil warms in spring. These fat stalks emerge from the soil and turn green in sunlight, ready to grow tall and do their solar energy harvesting, using sunlight to power a chemical process of making sugar in order to replace the fuel used for the orgy of cell division that pushed them up from underground.

New shoots follow these pioneers, handily producing more food, and thus more fat shoots which eventually mature into tall and feathery stalks, until the days quit growing longer. Then the plant goes into pass-on-my-genes-for-the-future mode and the feathery branches sprout tiny flowers (males and females on separate shoots, relying on the wind to assist in the act of fertilization). About that time--early summer, usually--the plant figures it has stored all the food it needs, and its shoots brown off as the roots go dormant. The following spring, when the soil warms again, they begin the lickety-split cell division that pushes new succulent shoots up into the light and air.

But it's mid-fall here in the southern Rocky Mountains, not spring. I don't know if these asparagus shoots can survive the freezing weather ahead, but I know this. Their effort, optimistic as it may seem, is the asparagus equivalent of believing in a world of possibilities. And last night's election certainly demonstrated to me the power of seemingly small actions like cell division--or voting--to work miracles.

So I'm going to watch those asparagus shoots. They may have something to teach me.

Oh, and the hornet's nest? "The Patriotic Thing to Do," my latest op-ed for High Country News landed on the front page of their web site and stirred up quite a hornet's nest of comments. (It also went out to 80-some newspapers with their Writers on the Range syndicate.) Here's how it opens:

Maybe I’m crazy, but I think that paying taxes is patriotic. And I’m tired of hearing Americans, especially Westerners, whine about their tax burden.

What does that have to do with the community of the land? Read it and see! (Here's a clue: it's about the nature of community.)

Gardeners: optimistic by definition

"It's easier to deal with crises like this in the spring," a friend said today after hearing about my husband Richard's cancer. "It's such an optimistic time."

I puzzled over her remark all day. This evening, I stepped out into the kitchen garden. The wind was blowing hard up the valley, the air temperature was plummeting, and the storms that might have brought us moisture had passed without dropping the rain or snow we sorely need. It's been an extraordinarily spring dry so far. Today marks seven weeks since our last measurable precipitation--and two weeks since the doctor scoping Richard's bladder said cheerfully, "And that's a big carcinoma."

There's nothing optimistic about this spring, I thought with distinct grumpiness.

Then I looked at the asparagus bed--and counted six fat new spears poking up through the dry soil.


Not only is our valley sliding into drought, the season has been bitterly cold too. Last week the nighttime temperatures dipped to 22 degrees F--twice.

And still the asparagus spears are pushing up from their octopus-like skirts of roots a foot deep, headed unerringly toward light and the chance to produce more food and make new life as surely as their kind have done every spring for millions of years.

As I turned to head back into the house, I passed the tomato bed. One of the plants cocooned inside the insulating tepee-shaped walls-o-water caught my eye--a costoluto, for you heritage tomato fans. It boasted half a dozen tiny flower buds, readying itself for the warmer weather and the buzz-pollinating bumblebees it is sure will come.


I shook my head in wonder. That's optimism, I thought.

And then, as if a light had switched on in my brain, I understood my friend's comment. Spring is an optimistic time: here in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, life awakens from its frozen slumber, and pushed by instincts far more experienced than mine, sprints into the lengthening days, aiming for light and renewal.

I'm a gardener: I should understand optimism. I'm the one who presses tiny tomato seeds into damp soil of seedling pots in early March, when here at 7,000 feet elevation in the Southern Rockies, the days are still short and dark, and the nights long and frozen. I'm the one who watches the rows of pots each day for the first sign of green, exulting when the pairs of slender cotyledons push their way out of the seed. I plant in the belief that spring will come. And it does.

It occurs to me that I can rely on that same optimism that leads me to plant tomatoes in late winter to cope with Richard's cancer. Only in this case, it's not a seed I want to sprout, but a carcinoma I hope will be destroyed. I'm after stopping that growth, not encouraging it. But that's gardening too: cutting off a diseased limb to save the tree it grows from.

The optimism my friend meant, I think, is about believing in the continuing cycle of life. It's not hard to apply that to Richard and his bladder cancer. He's blessed with caring people dealing with him and they're upbeat about his prognosis. So I'll just press my seeds of hope and rejuvenation in the soil of the universe, in the belief that spring will flower for him, time and again.