The other day my dad, unable to watch this year’s Wimbledon matches on TV, decided to recreate his own version on the uneven grass of our sloping backyard. Tired of being cooped up in the house, he grabbed two rackets and I stood on the one end of the yard and humoured him. He served lightly, I dodged, and the fluorescent green ball bounced into the little gardening plot behind me and hit a bean plant squarely on the head and knocked it over. My dad and I were equally horrified and amused. The latter rather guiltily because we could only imagine the look on my mother’s face when she finds out. We quickly placed a wooden stick beside it to help it stand up and as the rest of the yard was filled with my mom’s hard-earned seedlings, we decided to play badminton instead, tennis is best left for the courts
Among the ‘quarantine starter pack’ -which consists of baking, cleaning, sleeping, working, and other activities that you wouldn’t usually have the time for, an unhealthy obsession with Animal Crossing has bloomed among children and adults alike. According to Dr. Ramzan, lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, in an article from the New York Times, the game is popular with children because it gives them the ability to do chores that they usually wouldn’t be able to do but without actually having to do them. For adults, it’s an escapism of sorts also: from real life chores, stay at home orders, and the decidedly unattainable American dream. All this is replaced by the ability to grow neat rows of flowers behind a white picket fence in front of a perfect house and interact with your neighbors without any awkwardness. On top of which, in this world finding a job and paying off your mortgage to a tyrant raccoon landlord is as easy as making a trip to Target -who wouldn’t want to play!!
Instead of growing fake plants and tending to a made-up garden in an animated world, my parents have directed their energies toward cultivating a real garden in our backyard. In reality, plants do not always grow just because you did everything the right way. Life in nature is delicate, beautiful, and hard earned. Unlike in Animal Crossing where you just have to dig a hole and wait 4–5 business days, my mother painstakingly nursed hundreds of seedlings in our makeshift greenhouse downstairs until they’re ready to brave the weather outside.
As I watched our various vegetables and flowers grow throughout the summer, I came to understand a few things that only these plants could have taught me.
Baby spinach leaves grow ridiculously fast, adopt their unwavering determination in spreading their leafy greens and don’t stop being you.
Mature in one aspect as well as this zucchini which despite its girth was more tender and juicy than its smaller, store bought counterparts.
Be the rose among the thorns; set your goals bigger and farther than those around you in order to become better
Hide your colours underground like these carrots until they’re mature to show off
Sometimes we need a little help to stand up and that’s okay
You can grow in the unlikeliest of places
Looks don’t define taste
And lastly, be as tenacious as a bean
The next morning I went down to water the plots and found the small bean plant leaning on the stick, a new tender green tendril already curling around it.
