October 1, 2020
A Brief History of theVictory Garden
When my school district announced that it was shutting down operations on March 13, 2020 in response to the COVID-19, my very first response was: “Wow, two weeks of unexpected vacation. We can go somewhere. Maybe camping at Yosemite. Then it hit me. You’re not supposed to go travelling around. It would spread the virus. That’s the point.”
Well, now what was I supposed to do with my time. Part of my time from March 23-June 5 was spent learning the new term “Distance Learning” along with my Sixth Grade Science and PE students at Cabrillo Middle School. That was about four hours of my Monday-Friday time. What about the rest?
I can’t really go anywhere. At that point, I didn’t feel like I could even leave the house. Being in California, I now feel free to take neighborhood walks, go to the grocery store (with my mask on), ride my bicycle and other basic activities that restored some small sense of normalcy.
Most of the time, however, was spent in and around my house. That wasn’t too bad. I had the companionship of my wife and two cats. And, the yard. The pleasant sensation of sitting in the yard, front and back. The birds and squirrels, the willow trees and roses , the succulents. What’s so good about that? Well, I rediscovered something that I had learned from my father. The power of the garden.
My father was an avid gardener. He loved growing things. Our suburban home in Visalia, CA in the heart of the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley. The house took up a good portion of the 6,000 square feet of land owned by my Dad and the bank. But, whatever was not taken up by the house was dedicated to growing plants. Some of them were ornamental, they were there because they were pretty. A good deal more of the yard was devoted to growing plants that produced things that we could eat. We had lettuce, mustard greens, carrots, potatoes, onions and blackberry vines along the back fence. We had a plum tree with several varieties of plums, an apricot tree, a grapefruit tree, an orange tree, a tangerine tree and a White Kadota fig tree. We even had a small grass lawn in the front.
When you read the story about Victory Gardens in the link at the top of this page, you’ll begin to understand why I took up gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic. My garden is not anywhere close to what my father did, but in several grow bags, a couple of wooden planter boxes, a self watering pot and a couple of non-self watering pots, I created my own garden. My garden included (and still does to this date) several varieties of tomatoes, a lemon cucumber, green bell peppers, three wonderfully productive Sweet Basil plants (enjoyed by neighbors as well), a small eggplant variety that produced (is still producing) small eggplants that are great on those you bake pizzas that need a little more pizzazz.
The thought that what I and many Americans were doing with our yards was creating Victory Gardens really just hit me this past week. These gardens are providing us with food, but they are also helping to raise our spirits. Each one of us doing our part to defeat the COVID-19 in our own personal way provides a feeling of community and support that we have so badly needed during our extended Zoom-a-Thon.
The challenges didn’t end with a new virus. Then came the fires on the west coast and floods in the Gulf and Eastern states. A presidential election season that has added unnecessary stress on top of the natural phenomenon that we were already dealing with. Yet, for me at least, the idea that my garden is helping not only me, but my family, friends and neighbors through some hard times is very gratifying for me and gives me hope.
Carry on.