I’ve been very busy with paperwork at work and chores around the house. I’ve not been on line to read blogs in what feels like a week’s time.  In all this activity, I realized I got through 2 February, without realizing the significance  - February 1st or 2nd is the annual date to start seeds indoors. Normally by now I have read the seed catalogs, bought the seeds, and started the early things like celery and early type tomatoes.  And I haven’t done so. 

This is going to be the first year in over a decade I haven’t had some sort of vegetable garden. 

What a sad thought. 

There is nothing more satisfactory than harvesting real tomatoes and melons in late August. The first bite into something you have waited 8 months to encounter – well, there is no joy like it. 

I made the decision to not garden last month. After a few tries at vegetable gardening in Phoenix, I have to wave the white flag. It is too damn hot to grow what I normally enjoy growing. My favorite – heirloom tomatoes – won’t produce buds or pollen. What few toms I could produce were small and bitter.  I’ve tried a few methods and none have worked out. And the amount of work is triple – it involved a lot of watering and shading.  

I could alter my growing season; I could stick with things like hot peppers (which do grow). I could invest a lot of money into fancy vegetable beds. But it doesn’t seem worth it or enjoyable.  

Not having a garden will be a loss. The process of dreaming, planning and growing things has been an integral part of my psyche for years. It used to help with the rhythm of the year; a time to dream – a time to plant – and time to mend – and time to harvest – and a time to put it all to sleep.

Out here in Arizona there is no sense of winter or fall or spring anyway. There is hardly any sense of ‘season’. And growing vegetables in October does not feel right.  

So I say farewell to a long time hobby – for now. Perhaps next year I will have missed it enough to try once again to grow something. Perhaps over time our lives will change and we will be somewhere where I can restart it all. Who can tell.