March was named for Mars, the Roman god of war, and was originally the first month of the year. It was truly the month when winter was past and wars could resume. Too bad we don’t still follow that sensible practice and call off hostilities when the weather turns unpleasant. I’d gladly suffer a few blizzards and tornadoes if it meant peace, wouldn’t you?
The seed catalogues arrived soon after Christmas; they didn’t even wait until January this year. I suppose seed companies want to get sales underway well before the season, as do the vendors of goods for Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween and Christmas, just to name a few. By now, we’ve probably mailed in our choices of seeds, seedlings, gardening gear, birdbaths, nesting boxes and gnomes, or whatever the latest trends dictate. The big thing now is to wait for the right day, cooperative weather and psychological inclination to get out there and actually do it. Most of us are beginning to realize that armchair daydreams and actual physical exertion very seldom agree. What the heck, seeds are cheap and most of them will still be viable next spring. Come to think of it, didn’t we save a lot of seeds last year when we realized we’d over-ordered? Wonder where we put them.
Gardening has changed a lot during my lifetime. My grandparents were farmers and the men plowed the vegetable garden when they plowed the fields for planting corn and other farm crops. In town, my dad spaded up the garden plot after supper – usually taking a few days to get it all turned over before dark set in and his aching muscles forced a halt. Mother usually spent an hour or two each day breaking up the big clods with a hoe before they dried and turned hard as stone. There’d still be raking to remove the larger lumps and smooth the soil.
Dad had a dream of being able to raise most of the food his family needed, so he planted large gardens that provided plenty of fresh vegetables during summer and fall, as well as ample amounts of beans, peas, carrots and sweetcorn for canning. He planted grapevines along the garden fence and potatoes and peanuts in a specially prepared patch of sandy soil. Later, he tracked down farmers with surplus cucumbers, strawberries and acorn squash, and Mother paid bargain prices for over-abundant crops of apples, pears, cherries and plums raised by neighbors and farming friends. There were always onions and potatoes to store in the basement each fall, and bushels of tomatoes to can. One of my fondest memories is of the flats of fragrant, ripe peaches wrapped in purple tissue they were delivered late in the summer every year. Still my favorite fruit, I helped Mother slip off the skins after scalding and ate more than my share of those honey-sweet, golden beauties as we worked.
I had loved to help Dad in the garden, too, and missed gardening during the first few years after I was married. After attempting to raise a few radishes and little green onions in the shady yard of our first little house in the woods, my husband decided it more sensible to shop for garden produce at the Coralville Fruit Market in the late 1950’s and early 60’s. I had little chance to plant things even after we moved to Iowa City’s Goosetown district where we had a large double lot with ample room for gardening. Most of that back yard was sunny, several lofty elm trees having been sacrificed for the sake of a Victory Garden during WWII. We fenced the grassy back lawn for the safety of our young children and busy and adventurous cocker spaniel and, it turned out, a good many of the neighborhood children. For me, there was no time for gardening, so I wouldn’t get my chance until we moved to the country near Morse where I found myself with 160 acres of gooey clay soil that dried hard as adobe in the sun and supported a few acres of virgin timber, a small pond, pasture that had been devoted to hogs for thirty years, and stubborn stands of burdock and jimson weeds. What had been a garden plot for the previous owners now consisted of a long-neglected strawberry bed and an acre of flourishing weeds. I seriously wondered if I’d ever again be able to enjoy a vegetable garden.