Time to Dig In

There seem to be so many excuses to procrastinate on following a dream.
I use them all:

It's too early in the morning.
I just flew in and I need time to rest.
What if a glass of wine turns into three and I'm feeling it?
I probably won't learn anything anyway.
It's taking up a whole Saturday!
They'll probably feed me a sandwich on whole wheat bread and I'm sensitive to wheat and will puff right up but I don't want to make a fuss and I don't want to eat a nutritional bar food supplement for lunch and what if I can't eat outside on the grass because its raining and if it rains the whole program will be a washout anyway and...

Instead of using a sly self-sabotaging phrase I set the alarm for 7:30am. And one for 8:30 too.
Pulling into the parking lot of the Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach at 9, dented stainless tea mug in hand, I stumble into the red roofed lecture room. Coffee and munchkin donuts meet me at the entrance. I bypass the sugar and additional caffeine for the check-in table staffed by chipper (coffee and munchkins) morning people handing out pamphlets.

"Farm Your Backyard Workshop" the spiral bound handout proclaims. The periphery of the room is lined with tables, the center with chairs. Various visual aids are scattered on the brown laminate folding tables: blown up pictures of horned tomato worms and green lacewings (detrimental and beneficial insects, respectively), a row of pesticides and herbicides in warning-laden bottles, (organic and not so much), leafy tomato plants in black plastic growing bags, a carpet of microgreens peeking out of long trays, tiny seedlings stretching out of their Styrofoam hatchery, a batch of books on plants and gardening.

The center of the room is not quite as diverse. A gardening workshop in sunny southern Florida? Who do you think is going to show up: a sea of gray and dyed brown hair, blue vein highwayed translucent skinned hands clutching paper cups and pamphlets, bifocals focused on the lectern. A few greenthumbs under fifty are peppered throughout the crowd. Even though the demographics are skewed towards the golden years, I am just ecstatic to be around others who love vegetables.

I find a seat, pull out my notebook, and wait for the dirt on organic gardening.

Our lecturers are the Odd Couple. One an Agricultural Economic Development Coordinator (read: huge commercial farms advocate) and the other a (mostly organic) master gardener. The bantering and polar opposite suggestions regarding farming techniques and products begin at 9am and don't finish until we leave later in the afternoon. Yet it works. I don't agree that commercial mono-cropping is the way to feed the world, but I do agree that we need to figure out more efficient ways of farming. Do I want to spray malathion in my garden? No, but our master gardener occasionally does is nothing else works. He argues for indeterminate tomatoes, the other for commercial determinate. There is no right way to garden.

Powerpoint slides lead us through soil preparation and seed germination, pest and fungus control. Hydroponics is covered, the best veggies for Florida suggested.
Tangents are taken, questions welcomed. The characters in the audience are sometimes more entertaining than our hosts with their Yonkers accents, big bellies under suspenders, waxed gray mustaches, and emphatic, usually inappropriate comments.

Finally it is time to head into the real live garden.

Cauliflower and mustard greens, turnips and ruby red lettuce climb from the dirt. We pick off bits of leaves and taste the sunshine and chilly rain. We wander through hoop houses broiling in the morning sun and dirty outside tables covered with trays of burgeoning vegetables. Heaven!

I eagerly point out cabbage and bok choy, curly leaf kale and rainbow chard. I want to pull pieces of grass out of the competition for soiled nutrients but figure the weekly volunteers should probably have something to do in the otherwise pristine garden.

After a baby carrot (not from the garden) and delicious roasted mushroom (on whole wheat-damn) sandwich lunch on the grass, we all gather back inside for a final Q&A. Our hosts cut it off when the questions start getting personal and ridiculous ("If I wanted to grow soybeans on my 1/2 acre backyard swampy land, can I get an Ag Exemption? Ok, well what about corn?") and we were freed into the sunshine.

I don't know how much I learned from the Farm Your Backyard workshop other than there is no one way to do anything- if vegetables come up and aren't ravaged by insects or heavy chemicals, you may be doing something right.
But going to a workshop, participating in a community activity instead of sitting at home at the computer googling community gardening is a step towards a simple plot of land, a shovel-full towards building community, a leap onto a welcoming vacant lot of ideas and dreams of change.

It's time to dig in to stuff I've been talking about for years.
It's time to stop talking (writing) and dig.