Fairies On Gossamer Wings

Audrey Hepburn once said that to be a gardener is to believe in a tomorrow. Embedding a seed in the bosom of the earth and nurturing it is an act of faith. Faith in nature's generosity. The garden makes no covenants—Its only promise is possibility. The possibility that with patience and persistence will come beauty and bounty. In the past, I've grown the odd herb in a container, but spring 2017 marked my first foray into backyard vegetable gardening. After sowing the first seeds I waited impatiently like a restless child, but there is no hurrying nature’s schedule. In time came the magical moment when the first fragile leaves breached the soil. To this day I am awestruck by the primal power of vegetation. One moment the earth lies torpid, and the very next life bursts forth in verdant glory.

An organic gardener is an unarmed warrior in a land terrorized by disease and pestilence. Besides the caprice of nature, you are tested by spot, wilt and blight, and bullied by squirrels, beetles, and slugs. I rose to every challenge aided only by my trusted lieutenants, dish soap and neem oil. Soon the beds spilled over with gorgeous yellow squash blossoms and graceful purple eggplant blooms. Tomatoes and peppers teemed with tiny white flowers; Fragrant herbs ran wild in their containers. The garden appeared to be thriving, but underneath the redolent foliage a crisis was brewing. The baby squashes were withering away, the eggplants shedding their flowers, and the meager fruit were deformed and discolored. With no visible cause the malaise was utterly random. For answers I turned to that omniscient oracle—Google. A few searches later, a troubling pattern of words emerged: unfertilized flowers, no pollination.

The word pollination conjures images of cherubic yellow bees from elementary school textbooks. Apart from over 20,000 species of bees, pollinators also include butterflies, flies, moths, wasps, beetles, birds, and bats. As many as three out of four bites of food we eat are made possible by pollinating insects and other animals. As per a UN report, nearly half of insect pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, and a fifth of vertebrate pollinators, such as bats and birds, are facing extinction. The reasons are familiar: habitat-destruction, industrial agriculture, pesticides, pathogens, and climate change.

I had read the headlines with the usual resignation, but what had sounded like distant drums of war had arrived at my doorstep. Looking at my manicured surroundings I realized there was little there to entice a bee. The lawn is the most irrigated and pesticide covered crop in the country and I am surrounded by these urban wastelands. Underneath the envy-inducing green is a habitat-destroying monoculture, laden with bee-killing pesticides and fertilizers. Is it any wonder that the birds and the bees are abandoning suburban backyards? Is this how humanity goes? The kingdom was lost for the buzz of a bee? I remember my grandmother laying bowls of sugared-water in the courtyard in the glowing North Indian summers, “for the thirsty bees”. The frequent moves across the country due to my father's work meant finding a new home every few years. Where others looked for cupboards and built-ins, my mother searched for signs of bees. She says bees bring good luck and bless your home with prosperity. I’d read of an old English folk-custom called “telling the bees”, where honeybees were treated like family members and kept up to date with news of births, marriages, and deaths. When the gardener died, the new gardener’s first task was to whisper the news to the bees. I had picked my flawless cling-wrapped vegetables off shelves in climate-controlled supermarkets for far too long. I'd forgotten about my mother’s bees.

Humbled and enlightened, I made reparations. I started by placing containers of bee-friendly plants—poppies, zinnias, sage and lavender—around the vegetable beds, scattered wildflower seeds in the fallow beds and turned over a patch of grass to the dandelions and clover. I told the gardener to swear off the weedicides and hand-weed instead. Then I resigned myself to play paintbrush pollinator until nature bestowed forgiveness. The bee, I discovered, is a kindly soul, easily propitiated. One morning as I was leaning into a squash blossom, ready to swipe pollen on my paintbrush, I saw her. There she was in the heart of the flower, levitating like a yogi deep in meditation. I held my breath and stepped back. She seemed like a manifestation of divinity, to be revered and protected. Life givers, bees are the annapurna of mythology. Summer blazed on. The mint blossomed, and the basil bolted. By now there were a handful of them accompanied by an energetic black bumble bee. Every morning I waited, coffee in hand, for the reassuring glimpse of the bees. They didn’t disappoint. I like to think we became friends again, the bees and I. The squashes and the eggplants fruited with regularity, and the tomatoes produced an unprecedented bounty. As I embark on my pastoral journey yet again, my plans have changed with my perspective. This year I am planting a bee-haven, a wild xeriscape full of native florals and pollinator-friendly varieties.

On my early morning run I stop to look as the ascendant sun tints the horizon in amber hues. I feel present, connected to the natural world. A proverb comes to mind—We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. Our fate is interlinked with the species that cohabit our planet. If one skein of this magical weave comes apart, life itself could unravel. We owe it to our children to tread lightly, to protect the soil and the environment, and to preserve a patch of wilderness for the tiniest creatures that nourish and sustain us.

My Bee-FF! : )

 

Thanks for sharing your gardening adventures @Sunburst ! It is quite an adventure, and very very gratifying. I am a gardener for life now. I think there is a primeval part of being human that given a chance will always find its way back to the soil.

Neem oil is magical! I found an organic-farming friendly biofungicide called Serenade. Saved my tomatoes from bacterial spot. Wish I had known about it earlier. I threw away three flowering pepper plants last year. Looking back I could have saved them. Would love to exchange notes on your strategies for dealing with tricky diseases. Happy to meet a fellow vegetable gardener! : )