It’s been a month now since Patrick and I went for a somewhat spontaneous stroll down the path to the sweat lodge before dinner and found the old garden beds, overgrown with multiflora roses and dead burdock stalks. All he wanted was to show me how he had worked to get the compost tumbler unstuck from the mud and working again, and I applauded his efforts enthusiastically, of course. But we lingered just long enough for my curiosity to pull me toward the tangled mess, and soon we were breaking the thick dried-out stalks across our knees and chatting happily about bringing the space back to purpose and life.

They were humble raised beds, clapped together with scrap wood in an instant, or nearly so, four or five years ago, and then wrapped haphazardly but functionally with a length of plastic orange snow fencing propped up with slim rebar posts threaded here and there through the mesh. Protected by this MacGyver-like set-up were six or so tomato cages that held the most delightfully-named varieties: Sunrise Bumblebee, Blue Berries, Berkley Tie-Dyed Green, and Atomic Grape (someday, I want to sit at the table in that room where botanical experts make these decisions, just so they can see me smile broadly at their cleverness). We had also tried a lovely purple variety of cauliflower, which the groundhogs loved, but not enough to finish an entire head of it. As I have still not figured out the actual reason for groundhogs, I shake my fist at the entrance to their underground hovels and curse the hedonistic randomness of their eating habits.

But over the years, we’d turned our attention to a larger meat chicken enterprise, and the garden quickly became a promise we kept making as we walked to and from the sweat lodge, back and forth to the portable chick pens to rotate their pasture grazing area. We’d cast wistful and guilty glances in the direction of the raised beds, now overtaken by the sturdiest weeds the land could offer, and head back to the house where a package of thawed chicken thighs waited patiently in the fridge, marinating. The ghosts of homegrown greens and cabbage and zucchini were long forgotten.

We earned our dinner though, that evening a couple weeks ago, pulling out the rebar stakes, disentangling the snow fence and saving the tomato cages for this year’s crop. It took less than an hour, and our dreams that night were filled with images of the French Breakfast and Watermelon radishes we would tug from the soil to slice and scatter atop the corn mache and baby kale of our future salads. Back in the house, cleaned up and fed, we sifted through the seed packets we’d purchased last year, and set them to sprout in flats and peat pots placed on top of an old wooden crate that sat below one of the bathroom windows.

Patrick has been home since early March, like so many others whose lives have been interrupted and rearranged by the pandemic, and has not let the spring grass grow beneath his feet. He’s been hand-clearing the ridge just to the west of our house, raking the fallen branches and piles of yard waste I’d dumped there last year, filling the two-wheeled garden cart and making multiple trips back and forth to an impromptu burn pile near the now-cleared garden area. The ashes would be added to the compost tumbler to help balance the acidity of the mix and encourage those delightful compost worms so necessary to the whole process. Each day I’d come home from work to a tour and a full account of his ridge-clearing progress, his red-cheeked and smiling face a testament to his determination to keep the garden project on track. He did not disappoint, and I love him even more for his industriousness. If you’ve ever hand-cleared any overgrown patch of land with the intent to grow food there, or pushed back a thicket of stubborn, sinewy grapevines and thorny blackberry stalks that catch at your shirtsleeves and stick to your gloves, you know what he’s accomplished. It’s hard hands-and-knees type work, crawling and stooping and trudging your way to that grand and satisfying view of bare earth where a jungle once existed.

Is it any wonder then, that when I took a break late yesterday afternoon from a day of sewing facemasks to stretch my legs and breathe some of that excellent fresh air that only this place can offer, I found him armed with a propane tank and a blow torch, burning the area around and beneath the hooped trellises I’d installed over twelve years ago using ten-foot cattle panels, t-posts and zip ties? Apparently, the pioneer romance of hand-clearing had evaporated for him and he’d moved onto the “quick results” plan. I joke often that Patrick needs constant surveillance, but he knows his way around the business of fires, having served a long stint on the local volunteer fire department, trained up and everything. I trust him and yet, it’s still a startling to see the flames bursting from the metal torch, roaring and chewing through five years’ worth of dried vegetation. Through the smoke and bits of floating ash, I saw the blackened edges of the raised beds we’d built at the bases of each trellis, intended to help the pole beans and cucumbers climb their way to harvest time. I think we can save the planks for this year. Just need to reposition them a bit and look past the burned spots.

We’re in “make-do” mode, all of us, I think, if Facebook posts are any proof of our human tendency toward creativity in times of adversity. I suspect we approached the initial days of lockdown as some sort of socially responsible spring break, finding projects and crafts and self-sufficiency strategies that would make our ancestors nod approvingly, and give us great stories to share over lunch with our colleagues when we all returned to our regularly-scheduled workplace routines. But that hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve seen strong and heartening evidence that our own romantic gardening efforts are now focused on sharing what we grow with our neighbors, doing porch drop-offs of greens and baseball bat-sized zucchini and Principe Borghese tomatoes, waving and smiling at each other through the windows as we walk away. As staying at home stretches into a third month and who knows how many more beyond that, we come to a deeper appreciation for what it takes to live. And survive. As community.

When Patrick’s late father, Larry, was settled and tucked into a life beyond the 9 - 5, he often remarked “retirement has nothing to do with doing nothing”. I suspect he may have initially imagined a post-workplace life through the lens of idle leisure and anticipated more than a few episodes of boredom. At times, with this lockdown “social” distancing strategy in place to flatten the curve sooner (could we please consider revising that to “physical” distancing? It’s more accurate, and a lot more soothing to my ears), it feels like Patrick and I are in some strange sort of forced retirement practice, figuring out how to be with each other for extended periods of time, tending to what needs our attention outside the comfortable old walls of our living room, and learning what we’re capable of physically as we take on the more neglected areas of the land that lets us be here. So far so good, my friends, I’m happy to say. Inside, the sprouts have officially become plants, and outside, the two-wheeled garden cart awaits its next load of blow-torched ironweed and blackberry stalks.

We’ve all gotta do what we can. Right?