zucchini larceny 177do, on days when the work seems as overwhelming as any second job. But
most of the time that job provides rewards far beyond the animal- vegetable
paycheck. It gets a body outside for some part of every day to work the
heart, lungs, and muscles you wouldn’t believe existed, providing a healthy
balance to desk jobs that might otherwise render us chair potatoes. In-
stead of needing to drive to the gym, we walk up the hill to do pitchfork
free weights, weed- pull yoga, and Hoe Master. No excuses. The weeds
could win.
It is also noiseless in the garden: phoneless, meditative, and beautiful.
At the end of one of my more ragged afternoons of urgent faxes from
magazine editors or translators, copy that must be turned around on a
dime, incomprehensible contract questions, and baffling requests from
the IRS that are all routine parts of my day job, I relish the short commute
to my second shift. Nothing is more therapeutic than to walk up there
and disappear into the yellow- green smell of the tomato rows for an hour
to address the concerns of quieter, more manageable colleagues. Holding
the soft, viny limbs as tender as babies’ wrists, I train them to their trel-
lises, tidy the mulch at their feet, inhale the oxygen of their thanks.
Like our friend David who meditates on Creation while cultivating, I
feel lucky to do work that lets me listen to distant thunder and watch a
nest of baby chickadees fledge from their hole in the fencepost into the
cucumber patch. Even the smallest backyard garden offers emotional re-
wards in the domain of the little miracle. As a hobby, this one could be
considered bird- watching with benefi ts.
Every gardener I know is a junkie for the experience of being out there
in the mud and fresh green growth. Why? An astute therapist might diag-
nose us as codependent and sign us up for Tomato- Anon meetings. We
love our gardens so much it hurts. For their sake we’ll bend over till our
backs ache, yanking out fistfuls of quackgrass by the roots as if we are
tearing out the hair of the world. We lead our favorite hoe like a dance
partner down one long row and up the next, in a dance marathon that
leaves us exhausted. We scrutinize the yellow beetles with black polka
dots that have suddenly appeared like chickenpox on the bean leaves. We
spend hours bent to our crops as if enslaved, only now and then straight-