Planting and tending a garden, and feasting on the harvest, are always satisfying activities, whether the garden is our own yard/patio/windowsill or the gardens that stock farmers’ markets and grocery store bulk food aisles. But this year gardening has offered something more profound: hope—the calming reassurance that at some deep level, the world still works: plant—nurture—say thanks—enjoy.

But now this wonderful season comes to what Mary Oliver, near the end of “Six Recognitions of the Lord,” called the exquisite, necessary diminishing. What might we do now, to keep hope alive? Six thoughts are humbly offered.

1. Gardening is diminished, not done. A variety of gardening books, Food Grown Right, In Your Back Yard, for example, list ways to garden into late fall/winter. Garlic will over-winter and can still be planted outdoors for spring/early summer harvesting. Other hardy plants still have a chance outside too—chard and kale, for example, particularly if you can find starts. (But hurry….) Now is also the time for a last weeding/clearing-out and amending the soil. And consider a bit of indoor winter gardening—herbs in pots, or recycled scallions.

2. Buy vegetables, beans and grains that don’t come in packages. In other words, choose foods available in supermarket organic and bulk-food aisles or, if you’re comfortable shopping there, at farmers’ markets such as Pike Place Market. Think of this as your act of solidarity with other gardeners whose crops travel a shorter distance to your table—and, ideally, use less plastic.

3. Enjoy another kind of “garden.” Make it a point to regularly walk in nature. On your walks, choose specific trees, or hedges, or garden beds, and notice their cadence as they, and we, progress into and then out of winter. Or visit a formal garden such as the Seattle Japanese Garden to enjoy gardening on an entirely different scale.

4. Reflect. If we let them, gardening and food shopping can link us in a tiny way to climate change and global food security. According to Food Forward, “Currently, we produce enough food for the global population, but not everyone has equal access to food, due to income inequality, geopolitical conflicts, and other factors. In fact, we produce (and waste) so much food that if we prevented just 25% of global food waste, which totals at 1.3 billion tons annually, we could feed all 870 million people suffering from chronic undernourishment.” How can we embody this reality in our individual actions?

5. Think, then act.

We can start with our own behavior: we can waste less food, which includes buying blemished produce along with the perfect specimens and buying only the quantities we need.
We can include beneficial foods such as oatmeal, shade-grown coffee and seaweed, in meal plans. We’ve talked before about using our purchasing power to encourage farmers and food companies to behave in more eco-friendly ways. Farmers could plant oats or barley, for example, between rows of corn and soybeans—if we incent them to do so. Who would have thought that eating more oatmeal could be an act of eco-care?! According to this same article, “green eating,” which includes eating less meat, would bring affluent nations into closer alignment with their own dietary guidelines and “greenhouse gases from food production would fall by 13 to 25 percent.”
We can consider garden modifications that take climate change into account. These might include introducing native plants/controlling invasive species; growing plants that support pollinators and birds; retiring gas-powered yard tools; reducing water consumption with mulch, rain barrels, drip irrigation, spot watering and limiting watering to early morning/evening; composting waste; planting trees to absorb CO2; reducing hardscapes; and creating a rain garden.

6. Dream. Recently we started to wonder … next spring, what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else? Would you participate in such a project? What other gardening dreams might we turn into reality as purposeful, hopeful acts of caring for the world and each other? We also invite you to attend our first Eco-Faith Virtual Discussion on 10/29 @ 7 pm, more info here.