Rethinking the garden

I've been thinking. "Why am I struggling to find happiness in my happy world?" I have a kind, smart and beautiful wife, the world's coolest kid and spectacular grandchildren. My parents are still alive and love me dearly and I love the work I do in my professional life. I have the summer off (yes, three months of vacation) and get to golf, fish, camp, rock-climb, hike, garden, cook and visit with the people I love as often as I wish. So why am I struggling? Because summer took a vacation!

My garden looks like a limpid slug and I need homegrown vegetables and fruits to satisfy my summer's soul. As the pole beans struggle to climb my garden arbor and tomatoes, squash, onions, spinach, peppers, basil and carrots make a spring entrance in the summer season, I ache for the hot summer's sun.

It's raining today so I search my computer for solace. I search heirloom tomatoes and find Southern gardeners reaping their garden's bounty in mid-July. I search peppers and discover the bounty New Mexicans find in their labor. Finally, I search strawberries and discover a solo writer in North Idaho talking about the labor of his love and the robin trying to steal the fruit nurtured there. That writer is I.

This column brings me joy as I re-read about last summer's bounty. I share this column to reenergize the soul and remember what summer might be, if it decides to rejoin out lives. Enjoy.

While sitting on a lichen-covered rock bench in my vegetable garden I notice a large orange-breasted robin tugging at a worm. The bird releases the worm, cocks her head sideways and leaps into my strawberry patch. The war is on. "Oh no you don't," I scold as I grab my garden hose. The robin takes flight with strawberry in mouth as the stream of water hits the berry bed. Watering, weeding and mulching earn me the right to eat my garden's bounty. The robin has not earned this reward and I will not give in to her thievery.

Gardening is a new love of mine and as a chef, I find great reward in cooking food grown on my own land, organically with my own hands. Last year I canned for the first time and this year plan to eat exclusively from my garden through December (and hopefully throughout the winter).

Living in North Idaho makes it difficult to avoid grocery stores for sustenance in the winter but there are options. Fishing, hunting, gardening, harvesting from farmer markets and local orchards and freezing, canning, drying and brewing are all sustainable, natural and brings one back to our psychological roots. Becoming rustic creates psychologically health.

Thanksgiving dinner with a locally harvested wild turkey, root vegetables dug from the garden, green beans frozen from the summer garden, roasted corn salad from cobs picked in August and pies made from fresh pumpkins creates family memories not soon forgotten. Imagine the entire family participating in all processes of the dinner to include hunting and processing the turkey, digging and picking the vegetables and preparing the meal and pies - a new family tradition.

Becoming grounded - getting back to our life roots - slows life down and makes meaning of things that are meaningless. Creating real food with family and friends does just this. When life gets basic and food becomes unencumbered, we tend to become more basic and less concerned with unimportant life stressors. One tends to put away pretense and focus on the people we are with. We turn off cell phones and forget the Cowboys are playing the Redskins. We care more about the people we are working and celebrating with and excite in the idea that they are more entertaining than, "It's a Wonderful Life," or the seventh showing that Thursday of, "A Christmas Story."

American's need to plant food. It's important to know one is still connected to the earth, to reality, to life. I offer a plea, a prayer, a declaration - I pray the human race will gather, grow, hunt and harvest the food we consume. Planting a seed, nurturing that plant then consuming the food grown equates to being pregnant, giving birth then watching one's child grow to become a mature, stable, beautiful adult. Consuming food grown creates a cycle of life, which includes the food grown, raised or harvested, the person consuming the food, and the relationship of friends and family whose memories, emotions and biology are enhanced by the consumption.

Psychologically and culinarily people are headed in a healing stage from recent societal blemishes - food and mental wellness are connected. Let me explain. In our information society there is a division of labor. Instead of being a "jack of all trades," workers become an expert in one trade, which requires trust in that expert. A diploma, certification or licenses signifies expertise. But does it? Doctors specialize in certain fields of medicine instead of generalizing in human health, psychologists specialize in treating certain disorders while avoiding treating the individual and technical trade professionals install a water heater but will not address the electrical connections required to energize the boiler because they lack an electrician's license. Is the specialization, certification and intellectualization of America working? I say no.

The division of labor works well when our country prospers and individuals trust the experts. We trust the mechanic to fix our car, the doctor to set our broken bone and the food producer to produce food that is safe to eat but what happens when the country is not prospering and the experts we trust let us down? When spinach poisons and kills, banks file bankruptcy, our house is foreclosed on, our pay is cut and children's toys are found to contain lead we begin to lose trust in the experts.

When trust in society erodes, individuals tend to look toward the people they can trust - themselves. In this trust, people tend to look toward the basics and the roots of survival; can I grow my own food, make my own clothes, heal my own illness and protect my family? Due to this mistrust of the experts in our lives people tend to turn to the earth. In times of national fiscal and safety insecurity gardening increases, gun and ammunition sales increase, fabric store sales increase and people begin to eat dinner together more often.

Why does it take national fiscal and safety instability to bring American back to the earth? I'm not sure but I'm glad it's happening. My neighbors and I now talk about 54-day maturing Alaskan corn and how to best dry the herbs that are now exploding in their garden beds. We smell and comment on the food barbecued in our backyards, we talk of grandchildren picking cherries from the backfence neighbor and about the pesky robins. I'll take 200 strawberry thieving robins over backfence conversations about fiscal instability any day. Life is good!

Bill Rutherford is a psychotherapist, public speaker, elementary school counselor, adjunct college psychology instructor and executive chef, and owner of Rutherford Education Group. Please email him at bprutherford@hotmail.com.