WBEZ producer Kristin Moo did a short little piece on the Greenhouses of Hope at Pacific Garden Mission, where I’ve been volunteering for the last eight months. I was out of town the day she came down to tape, but I wouldn’t have been able to contribute anything that Nance and Sayre — and our ace gardeners Jose and Saad — didn’t say eloquently themselves.

It aired yesterday,and is archived online here, along with a slide show. The photo above only hints at the late-summer glory of the outdoor gardens right now. Every time I go down there I am stunned all over again at what we’ve been able to do with a few scraps of neglected, insulted land. The long, skinny garden that backs up against the UPS parking lot is lush with chard and tomatoes, squash and onions and fennel and carrots. Beans and peas are taking over the chain-link fence, and squads of fuzzy bees are dive-bombing the marigolds. As some plants start to bolt (intentionally, so we can harvest the seeds for next year) they shoot up improbably high, lending certain sections of the garden an alien, otherworldly air — a freaky jungle landscape in miniature.

I have been working here since January and I continue to be impressed by the holistic, permaculture-inspired system Nance has developed and implemented. In an environment like the mission, where most food comes out of cans and most people have many, many more pressing things to worry about than whether or not there are aphids on the tomatoes, it’s harder than you’d think to stay focused on the mundane, arthritis-inducing labor of watering and weeding. But that sort of day-by-day attention to detail is what keeps the blight away — from plants and, hopefully, people too.

 

ADDENDUM: I should point out, lest I seem to be investing diligent good-gardening practices with too much power, that sometimes things just Do Not Thrive.

What’s that Beckett saying? Fail. Try again. Fail better?

Good, if somewhat less optimistic, words to live by.