Earth Day in the garden

Jill Severn

I would say Happy Earth Day to all gardeners and all friends of gardens, but this year the day stirs up something far more complex than simple happiness.

We can, of course, mark April 22 as a day to celebrate spring's renewal of our love of the natural world as we watch buds open, listen to birdsong, and smell the fresh scents of trees and flowers. But with every passing year, Earth Day also brings to mind darker worries about Earth's – and our own – future.

The past year has seen a disturbing number of deadly tornados, floods, droughts and other signs of climate change in our own country. In other countries, growing areas of land are so parched they are now uninhabitable.

We read that there's worse to come based on the amount of carbon we've already put in the air. The question is how much worse – and how we can slow and somehow stop the worsening.

The New York Times reports that a recent survey found that over half of young people believe  that "humanity is doomed" and "the future is frightening."

We live in the fervent hope that human ingenuity, political will, market changes, and public education will lead us out of this peril. But can human earthlings see the urgency of acting as a species rather than as a collection of special interests, nations and peoples? Right now, it looks as if far too many of us can't quite fathom how urgently we need deep, fast and sustainable change.

Some days we strain to resist resignation, cynicism and despair, but those sentiments are like mental carbon emissions – forces that could be fatal to our species.

Instead, let's focus on the famous words of Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forester and government official, as our Earth Day mantra. He said, "In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."

Gardeners can help with the loving, understanding and teaching:

• We can invite the people around us into our gardens often, so they can watch plants grow, flower, and produce food. We can encourage them to smell the flowers, or eat a tomato warm from the sun. We can talk about how the changing climate affects what we grow and the bees and other living creatures we depend on.
• We can give gifts of flowers, vegetables and fruit. In winter, we can give jams, jellies, pickles or dried herbs as reminders that the earth feeds us every day of every year.
• We can take children for frequent walks outdoors to look at whatever is growing, and whatever is flying, crawling, or singing in the tall grass. We can feed their sense of wonder, and let theirs feed ours.
• We can recite poems like this one, from Robert Frost, called "Putting in the Seed"

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Gardeners who, like Robert Frost, are "slave to a springtime passion for the earth" are well qualified to help spark that passion in others – especially young people. A passion for the earth is the antidote to doom and fear.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com