(published in Organic Gardening magazine - May 1989)
by Judith Goldsmith

The Cycles in Our Lives, or Why There Will Always Be Gardeners

The winter wind whips around the heads of a hundred or so
nature-lovers gathered both solemnly and joyfully in a grove of trees
on the side of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin, California, or, other years,
on a hillside overlooking the Berkeley waterfront with its splendid
view of the Golden Gate. We circle, burn cedar, place rocks we have
brought, greet friends, then cheer on several of our friends who,
masked and costumed, enter the circle to speak for the four
directions, for grandfather sun and grandmother moon, for coyote
the trickster, for fire, wind, earth, and water.
We talk about what has hened in the world and our lives since
our last meeting, and offer hopes that many things will change
for the better by the time we next meet.
It's December, and the San Francisco Bay Wakwa Society has called us
all here to mark the quickening of the seasons, the time when the winter
finally turns to warmer days again.

The cycles of nature in our lives:
the first warm days of spring, the long days
of summer heat, the turnabout of autumn,
the long nights and the chill of winter -
more and more people are returning to an awareness of these cycles.
We hold solstice and equinox celebrations. We celebrate the seasonal
holidays of Halloween and May Day. We hold weddings and other
celebrations outdoors in nature.

[I live in the San Francisco Bay area, where we feel this
especially keenly. Our special little bioregion is unique in
North America. Not only do we have California's Mediterranean
climate of year-round warm weather, differentiated only by winter
rains and summer drought. We also have an especially mild and
temperate climate due to our position next to a western ocean,
which gives us summer fogs and winter warmness that, I've heard,
makes us the second most temperate place in the world next to Madagascar.
Maybe because we are so far removed here from the seasons, we have
become acutely aware of the need to be in touch with them.]

Some scoff and ask why bother? Who needs to know?
Isn't this just pre-industrial superstition?
Aren't we modern city-dwellers beyond all that?

As a gardener, I feel a different response in my bones.

Maybe as children we don't need to be aware of natural cycles.
Summer can be wonderful and endless, school can be
bothersome and endless, when it rains we stay indoors,
and when it's clear and sunny we go to the beach or play outside.
Even special holidays and birthdays and vacations have
not yet fallen into a familiar pattern.

Maybe as urban dwellers we don't need to be aware of natural cycles.
Food comes from the store, canned and processed; the weather forecast tells
us whether to carry an umbrella or wear a jacket;
we ride to work in a sheltered metal bubble; concerts
and bookstores and movies go on year in and year out no matter the weather.

Maybe as modern people we don't need to be aware of natural cycles.
Progress carries us ever foward, even sweeps us with
it; what is a norm in our day was a vision in our
grandparents'; work goes on forty hours a week, fifty
or so weeks a year; we can mark time with raises,
job changes, marriages, divorces, and children.

But as gardeners we must be aware of our yearly and
daily cycles, of the proper time and place for things.
Finding bare-root asparagus to plant in midsummer is as
impossible (even in our ultra-modern world) as
trying to buy fresh sweet corn in January or cherries in October.
Tomato plants planted in September will not survive to fruit;
trying to gather dried flowers in December is hopeless;
and so it goes in every contact with the earth's rhythms.

Of course, it's an unsolvable question whether we become aware of
natural cycles because we like to garden or whether we
like to garden because it makes us aware of natural cycles.
Certainly food can now be purchased from huge agribusiness enterprises,
flowers can be bought in flower shops, gardens can be planted
with low-maintenance standard plants or even Astroturf
or concrete, and we can even live in apartments or
condominiums where lawns are watered on timers.
No matter, some of us will always be gardeners.
For the freshness of the food, for the joy of spring
blooms, for the feel of earth, for the exercise, for
the restoration of mistreated land, for the way it gets
us back in touch with natural cycles; whatever the
reason, some of us will always and forever want to
plant and tend and nurture and harvest.

But, of course, there's more.
Becoming aware of the rhythm makes us part of it,
grounds us, and gives us a sustenance that doesn't
come easily in this speedy, out-of-balance modern world.
A link is reopened that has been closed, and the world
becomes a more vital and exciting place.
Watching for the first ladybug in spring,
listening for the sound of sweet pea pods bursting
like a corkscrew in the hot days of summer,
testing an le to see if it is ripe and nearly ready to fall,
noting the first daffodils as they push their way up
through the soil in winter - all of these
make us feel closer to a vital force that is larger
than the unpaid phone bill or the long lines at the supermarket.
Then too there is the deep satisfaction of providing
for ourselves, of raising foods we like, of
gathering our very own flowers to put on the desk of
someone we like to give pleasure to.

There are so many reasons for getting in touch with the earth's rhythms -
not just the practicality of it, but also the contentment it brings.
Along with the sound of rain on the roof while sitting
in front of a crackling fire, or a bee buzzing from
flower to flower, or fresh bread just out of the oven,
we should never be living without these things.
How could we ever have believed that we could?