What we leave behind

Way back in late spring I started working on trying to get a garden put in at our house. There wasn't a lot of space, most of the available space was sorta shady, and the soil wasn't exactly ideal. So, after a small plot was tilled up and a meddlesome tree branch mysteriously disappeared all I needed was dirt.

Umm, hey, dirt... Dirt?

Dirt ended up being way up on the north side of Cincinnati, barely within the city limits. Laura had located it with some help from the Civic Garden Center. There was a dump site at a small park where the city deposited their leaf debris. As the years rolled by the pile turned into a super duper mountain of composted leaf dirt that was free for the taking. Great!

Well, mostly great. How the heck was I gonna get it down to our house? We didn't have a car at the time and I couldn't think of anybody that would have been particularly excited to let me borrow their car so I could haul dirt. Who did I know with a truck...? Umm, not a whole bunch of people. I had one offer from my co-worker's husband but it ended up that he double booked homself with a family get-together. Drat.

Finally I got a solid hit. Our good friend, Bethinary Bekah, was in town for a few days in late July. She has a car - score! In exchange for some gas money and Graeter's ice cream she drove me up to the park to get dirt. Since there was no truck bed we had to put the dirt inside the car. We filled up 2 trashcans, 2 recycling bins, and 5 five gallon buckets - not too bad for her little Saturn Ion. There was a similarly sounding story replayed a few weeks later with Laura and her equally diminutive yet dependable '85 Camry. I had dirt!

Unfortunately, I had dirt at the end of July. For those of you who know a thing or two about gardening, that's not exactly the ideal time to be planting your garden, especially if it's something that takes a little longer to grow. Tomatoes would be a good example of this. Most of what I had to plant was tomatoes courtesy of Laura having extra starts from the community garden. Oh well; I took a shot at it anyway.

We had tomatoes in the front flower bed, the raised bed that I built from random lumber, and the in-ground garden in the not-as-shady-as-it-used-to-be backyard. There were other plants that went in as well - peppers, beans, potatoes, zucchini - but the tomatoes were the the most plentiful and one of my favorites. I was super excited to see them grow and produce lots of tomatoes. I had dreams of having so many tomatoes that we would be giving them away to people at church and in the neighborhood, meeting more neighbors in the process. We certainly had enough plants for it to happen, but would they mature in time to produce?

It was a rough summer for growing anything due to the heat and the lack of rain that went with it. Cincinnati collectively turned a dried-out yellowish brown. Our garden hose at the house didn't really reach to any of the flower beds or gardens (seriously, who picked that one?) so all of the watering happened by way of a doctored-up-with-duct-tape watering can. I didn't really mind lugging around the watering can; it was sometimes rather therapeutic at the end of a long day at work. The unpleasant part was the massive amounts of mosquitoes. In a drought? How did that happen? I really don't know, but it happened. ALL. SUMMER. LONG. Ugh. Stupid mosquitoes.

Sometime around late August, maybe early September, one of the tomato plants in the front flower bed gave us our first tomatoes. They weren't huge but it was a start. As the calendar crept toward the end of September the one single plant kept producing while the dozens of other plants just kinda hung out. Nada. Not even one single bloom. Finally, one day I went to water them and there were blooms. Yes, blooms! It wasn't just one plant, either; four or five plants had decided they were gonna get in on this whole "producing fruit" business. Better late than never, right?

It might have been too late, though. Our Indian summer took a break and the temperatures plummeted with the daytime highs struggling to get into the mid-60's. The tomatoes stopped growing and just kinda hung out, content to remain in whatever state this chillier weather had caught them. I wanted to scream at them, "Hurry up! Don't you know we're on a timetable here?!? I'm leaving soon and the first frost will be here before you know!" Sadly, tomatoes don't have ears so they were not persuaded.

The weather warmed up finally and the tomatoes went back to turning their little yellow starbust flowers into tiny green tomato orbs. I knew it was too late for me, though. The clock had ticked far enough past the point of hoping to see any of those little chartreuse promises turn into the reddish ripe fruits that I'd envisioned months earlier. I had known from the start that it would have been a close call as to whether or not this garden would produce anything before I left since it got started so late. Despite the one tomato that had put forth it's plum-sized bounty for the past month, I felt defeated. You can't win every time you gamble.

I kept up with watering the gardens anyway. Like I said, it was mildly therapeutic and even if I wouldn't get to see the end result I had still enjoyed the process and watching it all happen. In a way I felt like I owed it to the plants to see them through to the end of my time in Cincinnati since I had put them in the ground in the first place.

Finally I arrived at my last day in Cincinnati. Katie had already left and Laura was back in Nebraska for the week. Anne and her mom were out and about getting Anne's new apartment ready. I had the house to myself; you could probably count on your fingers how many times that happened in the past year. I needed to finish (read: start) packing for my train out of town that night but first I had something else to take care of - there was a garden that needed to be watered one last time.

As I wandered from one garden to then next I enjoyed thinking about how much these beds had transformed in the past few months. A few of the plants had never really taken off and thrived but a good number of them looked like healthy, happy flora. The sky overhead was darker than usual and the wind had picked up from earlier in the day but you couldn't smell any rain in the air. On one of my trips to fill up the watering can I stopped to talk to Carla, our neighbor, and let her know this was my last day in Cincinnati. We talked a bit about the year and what was happening with our house.

While we were talking a thought crossed my mind. I ran around to the front of the house and gathered our last six tomatoes from the one plant that had produced for us. There was also one solitary pepper on a very sad looking pepper plant around on the side. I snatched that up as well and took them around to the side fence, presenting them to Carla. It wasn't much, but it was all we had. She was receiving 100% of our pepper harvest that year and possibly the last of our tomatoes. Carla said she was looking forward to having the tomatoes on her salad the next day. I mentioned that since we were moving she could help herself to anything else that might still come in after we left. This seemed to please her as she talked about possibly making green tomato salsa or relish.

We said our goodbyes and I went back to watering the gardens. There was plenty on my mind as I was processing moving, my last day of work, what was coming next, packing, and life in general. As I emptied the last can of water on the last row of tomatoes the wind began to pick up. It was dusk and there was a slight glow in the air as the setting sun tried to push through the clouds that blanketed the sky. The yellow leaves from the thornless honey locust by Laura's window began to fly off the branches by the hundreds and the leaves from the Bradford pear joined in the dance as well. With the wind came the smell in the air that I had been missing so much: rain.

It was on its way. I put down the watering can and stood in our backyard with my arms outstretched, letting the wind and leaves whip themselves around me. As the first raindrop hit my right forearm there was a sense of reassurance that came over me. I hadn't really acknowledged it too much until now but I was worried about what would happen after I left. Would the next volunteers work out as well? What would happen to the raised bed on the side of the house? Would anybody water the plants at our old house if the frost stayed away? Who would be the back-up piano player at church for when Saundra was out of town? What if nobody at work wanted to sing with Jeanne or whistle for Georgine or remind Eve to water her philodendron?

With that one raindrop I was reminded that Cincinnati would continue on without me there. Everything would be okay. The new volunteers would learn the ropes and bring their own gifts to the house, congregation, and their projects. There would be music in the church, someone would sing with Jeanne, and the rain would come when it was needed. The four of us may have been leaving the house and our projects, but we had left plenty behind for those who were coming next. After a few minutes I picked the watering can back up and heading inside to get back to packing.

Good-bye, Cincinnati. Thanks for a year I won't forget anytime soon.

Also, thanks to anyone who followed along on our year-long venture in Walnut Hills. What a ride it has been.

Peace to you on your journeys.