I am the grandson of a zealous gardener. Before coming to a frontier village in Saskatchewan in 1919, my maternal grandfather had lived in a row house in a smoky industrial town in England. The back lane behind his home enclosed a meagre yard where a single sickly tree struggled to survive in the tainted air and cold winds from the North Sea. There was no garden. When his job in a munitions factory was gone, Canada beckoned.
In Saskatchewan, he became a man of substance, occupier of an estate of 6,250 square feet, as land was measured then. Under the short native grasses, the soil was rich and deep. In the eight years before I was born, my venerable ancestor planted with wild abandon. There was a row of Manitoba Maples on the west and two more on the front lawn, a row of willows on the east and six Russian Poplars within the yard, as well as flowering shrubs. He had no vehicle of his own, but he somehow managed to obtain enough deadwood from the river valley to build some elaborate trellises. The river valley also yielded up a brave little cottonwood sapling which eventually grew to be the tallest tree in the yard.
Until tree roots sucked the moisture out of it, there was a bounteous garden. Grandfather planted every kind of vegetable that would grow in his part of Saskatchewan. In season, there were fresh vegetables on the table every day. In the fall, all along the avenue where he lived, there was the sweet, rich perfume of the pickles and relishes being made in every kitchen.
I emulate my ancestor. I grow heritage vegetables. I give most of the garden's bounty away. Eating them is a pleasure, but seeing small seeds grow into vigorous plants is a pleasure in itself.
Whatever a gardener chooses to grow, he also grows a serene mind.
Sometimes I make random journeys along the back lanes of my town. Finding even a poorly tended garden is a rarity. I see manicured lawns, huge decks and expensive gas-fired barbecues.
I see parking places for travel trailers, quads and boats. From their secure pens, large dogs threaten to eat me and little dogs yap incessantly for no reason at all. I imagine grandfather's ghost walking beside me. He is making noises somewhere between sobbing and swearing. I feel like doing so, too.
Most of the people in this world live in crowded cities. Visiting farms, pastures and wild places is a form of recreation for them. What food producers do is not recreation. They are preserving an essential link with the soil, and with sanity.
