Here we are finally in the month of April, this sweet month when we finally emerge from the formalin in which winter plunges us to admire this impressive phenomenon of nature which comes back to life.
For me, intrusive thoughts of gardening start to bubble up around Easter. My relationship with gardening is ambivalent. I fantasize about seeing myself go out with my wicker basket, wearing denim overalls, a twig as a toothpick and whistling the song I will make a garden, by Clémence DesRochers. However, the memory of the gardening traumas of my last years always brings back the remnants of all these failures and pitfalls encountered before harvesting the first radish.
Every spring, like a trout that still doesn’t realize that behind the worm there is a hook, I fall back into the trap. It seems that winter freezes painful memories of the many obstacles of agriculture. First, there is the choice of D-day for planting. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this, but we live in climatically hostile territory. You can look at the weather forecast for the next 14 days, not see the slightest sign of frost, then make the decision to take action, even if the people at the garden center don’t recommend it. But on the evening of the full moon in June, the weather shifts to the dark side of the force and threatens to kill everything in the night. You then have to go into solution mode, cover the garden with plastic sheeting, cross your fingers and toes, compulsively watch the mercury fall and look at the garden through the window believing that it can really be useful for something… A throw of the weather dice which falls to -6. Back to square one and to the garden center, every gambler frost are in line with carts again filled with plants. The owner at the cash register displays a clever smile that combines empathy and love of profit. These rebellious customers are obviously his favorites. Twisted minds might even dare to believe in a scheme between the weather channel and the garden center association. With the new purchases, the cost price of each tomato has just increased from $2 to $4. And if I count the ticket that a nice police officer gave me for not having stopped completely at an intersection in the middle of the woods, we add another $2.
But we end up erasing all that from his brain. Humans have this exceptional ability to float innocently in the limbo of denial. The pleasure of harvesting your own tomatoes is extraordinary, living in nature, there is nothing better, blah, blah, blah, and, in a few hours, you throw away the bill and a new garden springs up.
I really love fresh lettuces, incomparable with those from the grocery counter. I see the first shoots emerging, it moves me, a tear leaves my eye, runs down my cheek and nourishes my fragile “gifts” from nature. My lettuce will be salted in advance by my market gardening emotions.
Every day, I come to watch the evolution of my garden with monastic rigor. I’m hesitant to pick my first lettuce: I’m waiting for THE right size, just to enjoy a nice big fresh salad with 35% cream, radishes and chives. It’s these kinds of memories that numb bad experiences in the garden. Tomorrow, it’s decided, I’ll pick. I spend the night daydreaming about my divine salad, I toss it in slow motion with style, the whitish cream and the redness of the radishes make it look like a photo from a book by Josée di Stasio.
At sunrise, I go to do my daily inventory, and bang, life changes, the lettuce has disappeared, only a few puny cores remain. A marmot, probably very friendly, came to eat my dream. She is somewhere, comfortably sitting on her big butt, looking at me, discreetly burping my lettuce, smiling with her beautiful green teeth.
At the same time, I notice that my tomatoes don’t produce many flowers, that I will perhaps have, at most, three peppers and that the ribbon of carrot seeds has only half germinated… One day to put in the compost!
But that’s not all, there is also the climate: too much water, not enough, too much sun, not enough, nights too cool, too hot, hail and violent winds. I haven’t even talked about insects and diseases, the famous late blight, which often strikes and causes tomatoes to rot before they even end up in a photo on Instagram.
For garlic and onion, there is the leek moth. This moth manages to find, no matter where it is in Quebec, my little square to come and settle there. It smells of garlic, let’s go there!
I don’t know exactly what pushes me to go through the same market gardening decrescendo every year. Once again this spring, I will put on my overalls and I will do it again, my last pot of fresh tomatoes got the better of my apprehensions.
The Marthe Laverdière phenomenon which has grown in our cultural garden contributes enormously to demystifying this pastime and its pitfalls. Between the jokes of seeds, tufts and planting, she perfectly succeeds in communicating the pleasure of putting one’s hands in the earth. However, be careful, she is the owner of a garden center. You should consider checking her phone to make sure she doesn’t have any secret communications with the weather channel. While waiting for the commission of inquiry, everyone together: “This summer, I will make a garden / If you want to stay with me / A few more months / It will be small, that’s for sure / I will take good care of it / I ‘I’ll take good care of it / So that it’s as beautiful as you.’
Who is Dany Turcotte?
- Originally from Saguenay, Dany Turcotte first became known as a comedian, within Blood Group, in the mid-1980s.
- After the dissolution of the group, he continued his humorous career alongside his accomplice Dominique Lévesque.
- From 2004 to 2021, he is Guy A. Lepage’s “jester” in Everybody talks about it.
- He is the host of The little seduction from 2005 to 2017.
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