13 • LIFE IN A RED STATE
AugustI’ve kept a journal for most of the years I’ve been gardening. I’m a habitual
scribbler, jotting down the triumphs and flops of each season that I al-
ways feel pretty sure I’d remember anyway: that the Collective Farm
Woman melons were surprisingly prissy; that the Dolly Partons produced
such whopping tomatoes, the plants fell over. Who could forget any of
that? Me, as it turns out. Come winter when it’s time to order seeds again,
I always need to go back and check the record. The journal lying open
beside my bed also offers a handy incentive at each day’s end for making a
few notes about the weather, seasonal shifts in bloom and fruiting times,
big family events, the day’s harvest, or just the minutiae that keep me en-
tertained. The power inside the pea- sized brain of a hummingbird, for
example, that repeatedly built her nest near our kitchen door: despite her
migrations across continents and the storms of life, her return date every
spring was the same, give or take no more than twenty- four hours.
Over years, trends like that show up. Another one is that however
jaded I may have become, winter knocks down the hollow stem of my
worldliness and I’ll start each summer again with expectations as simple
as a child’s. The first tomato of the season brings me to my knees. Its vital
stats are recorded in my journal with the care of a birth announcement:
It’s an Early Girl! Four ounces! June 16! Blessed event, we’ve waited so
long. Over the next few weeks I note the number, size, and quality of the