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All I did was plant a watermelon seed. Actually, I planted two – they say to plant two seeds to increase the probability of germination. I created a small mound of 50% compost and 50% top soil from Home Depot because my native Florida sandy soil has very little in the way of nutrients, and I made a border for a six-by-six foot patch, covered it with pine straw to keep the soil moist through the hot weeks ahead, and watered it. Daily, at first, and then as needed as the plant became more and more established.
I knew I was pushing my luck just a bit, planting watermelons late in the season. In south Florida gardens, watermelon should be planted sometime in February, latest in March for a summer harvest. I waited until the last week of March. Still, I felt that it was deserving of a pat on the back. Last year I planted my watermelon seed in June and watched the poorly sprouted plant shrivel day by day. The reminder of its pathetic, crispy leaves struggling humbled my expectations for what would come this year. It was a delightful surprise, then, when after just two weeks both seeds had sprouted and were producing healthy, soft green leaves. I cautiously cut back one of the two plants. While both looked perfectly healthy, one was just a little more robust, its leaves larger, more fleshy and vibrant.
Everyday, on my morning walk through the garden, I’d glance over at the plant with a little hesitation, fully expecting to see some sign of decline, but my hesitancy would turn into the kind of curt approval of Robert DeNiro – lips pressed together, corners of the mouth turned down and the slight lift of the eyebrows. Hmm. – before moving on. I didn’t want to give it too much approval, lest it let me down.
Still, the plant kept growing, vigorously around the end of May, and by mid-June the vines of that one plant nearly covered the entire six-by-six foot area. My husband said the leaves looked alien. They seemed alien to me, too, because what do you mean the plant was thriving? In my garden? Surely, it was an anomaly.
I kept the vines trained to stay inside the patch area, something I learned was important in my yard from growing pumpkins last year – controlled chaos. Let them grow freely, but train them to stay where it is safe, where the ground keeps moist and where the pollinators can collect. A lesson that, ironically, did absolutely no good for the pumpkins as I watched them get ravaged by squash worms, their leaves skeletized, leaving my already small seminole pumpkins even smaller and sad. Strangely, despite being in close proximity to the pumpkins (within ten feet), the watermelons largely remained untouched by pests. One or two squash worms found their way into the tender young leaves of the watermelon plant, wrapping themselves up in a cocoon, but after removing the few, none seemed to return. And then the flowers came. Dozens a day, sometimes. Mostly male, but plenty of females as well. I was well-entertained by the miniature pre-pollinated watermelons with their little yellow, trumpet-shaped blossoms. I did have some pollinators in my garden at this point, but I hand-pollinated all the flowers I could to be safe, taking a male and transferring the pollen from its stamen onto the stigma of the female.
Then the rains came. And it seemed every time I pollinated a good potential watermelon, it would pour rain and wash away the pollen before it could take. I tried covering the pollinated flower, but was disappointed each time.
One morning, ahead of a two week trip my husband and I had planned to attend a couple of weddings, I hand-pollinated several more flowers and left. I tried not to think much about it, other than that I hoped the person we’d asked to water the garden remembered to do so. When we returned, I was shocked to find a watermelon already the size of a basketball and still growing! Riding high on the excitement that growing a watermelon was actually possible (something I’m not sure I actually believed when I planted the seeds), I spent the next few mornings searching for viable females with baby watermelons to pollinate. And soon after that, I spotted additional watermelons growing. We had, in total, six watermelons growing from this one plant!
But something happened when that first watermelon showed up. My anxiety started creeping in. Was it healthy? Was I overwatering it? Underwatering it? What did this little brown speck on this leaf mean? Do I need to elevate my watermelon so it isn’t sitting on the ground getting a soggy bottom in the rain? Do I need to fertilize?
I started worrying about the watermelons. It was going so well. I didn’t want to ruin it. And most frustratingly, as a novice gardener, I had no idea what made it grow. How then could I keep it from dying?
And sure enough, we lost one little guy to a soggy, moldy bottom after a bout of excessive rain, and another to splitting. But four were holding steady, each one bigger than the other. At the end of the season, we harvested four watermelons in total, two larger than any grocery store variety I’ve seen (we grew seeds from a local farm watermelon), one of modest size, and one the size of a good cantaloupe. So far all have been sweet and tasty.
Gardening has not been easy. Gardening in south Florida has been downright hard. In the past 14 months since starting my garden, I’ve grown a good amount of yard long string beans, a few measly seminole pumpkins, a small bucket of turd-sized sweet potatoes, three peppers that would hardly feed my two-year-old nephew, three scrat-like cobs of corn, two tiny tomatoes, about a dozen peanuts, and a decent amount of herbs. Many of the plants I’ve grown are meant to be easy to grow here. But my heat-tolerant cucumbers failed, my heat-tolerant grapevine died, and I’ve ripped out several tomato plants and lufa plants. My dream of being able to feed my family from our garden is a long way away from being realized. Watermelon was supposed to be the difficult one. But it turned out to be the least problematic, and revealed some crucial lessons to me about my anxiety.
First. Good things can still happen despite my lack of involvement. The goodness in my life and in the world is not dependent upon my control. The watermelons grew. Despite me. Despite my inexperience. Despite my lack of knowledge. Despite my slightly poor timing. Despite my tendency towards impatience. They grew. All I did was plant a seed and water it, taking a little instruction along the way. But the success, the win and even the blessing only felt good until I realized that if I don’t understand what made the watermelons successful, how can I make sure they continue to be successful in my garden?
That leads me to the second lesson I learned. The more I worry and the more anxious I get, the more likely I am to ruin it with my control and my meddling. When I found that initial watermelon, it was exciting, but also terrifying, because what if I killed it? And even once all the watermelons were picked, I wondered, What will happen next year? What will the plant produce? Should I do the exact same thing I did this year, plant in the same spot, or somewhere else? Maybe I need to give it more attention? In short, I felt like I could not take credit for the success. And if I couldn’t claim that success, then how could I replicate or ensure that success in the future? But by seizing control over something I have very little control of, I usually end up making it worse. Trying too hard is a thing, I’ve learned.
There is a balance here, however. Sometimes, I do need to get involved, when it’s not out of worry but out of necessity. For example, after we lost one watermelon to a soggy bottom and one to a split bottom from excessive rain, my husband and I took some sticks and propped up the remaining watermelons so that they wouldn’t sit in the wet mulch. Then I walked away, reminding myself that it was ok if the watermelons didn’t make it. It was okay if they died. It might seem silly to have to reassure oneself that it’s okay if a watermelon plant dies, but those who have struggled with worry, anxiety, and to an even greater extent scrupulosity, will understand. Scrupulosity, a subtype of OCD, convinces my brain not only to worry about keeping the watermelon alive, but also that if it dies, it’s a direct reflection of my moral standing with God. I’m a bad person. God has turned His back on me. The way I try to break that thought pattern is by minimizing the significance of the situation or the decision by which I’m inclined to measure my morality. So I tell myself, It’s okay if the watermelon dies. Period. I do what I need to do, and I get out of there.
Third, this watermelon experience made it very apparent what a joy sucker anxiety really is. When things are going well, anxiety swoops in and reminds me that things can’t always go well, that eventually, something will go wrong, so there’s no point in continuing. In fact, anxiety tells me, you might as well just kill the thing now. It has happened with everything I love: singing, writing, painting, and now, I was becoming aware of it in real time, with gardening. Gardening was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be life-giving, literally. It’s about growing food! And here comes my anxiety-ridden OCD brain to hijack it and rob me of that joy.
In gardening, much is out of my control. So much is unpredictable. It’s funny, then, that I love to garden. But it has brought crucial life lessons I had previously explored through metaphors to life for me. As a teenager, I would often write through the metaphorical lens of a garden as a means to process my inner life. I would write about what was growing, what was dying, and in my garden, there was a Gardener helping me and teaching me. Themes I often wrote about (because they were struggles in my life) included patience, giving up control, timing and heeding the Gardeners advice.
20 years later, and it seems the metaphorical rendering wasn’t enough. I needed to get my hands in the dirt. I needed to feel the sun on my back. I needed the reality of watching a plant wither away, clueless as to how I can help it. And I needed the unexpected wins to remind me that though I’m learning, I’m not in control and will never be.
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