Cyn Kitchen: The philosophy of a flop

I decided to try my hand at a vegetable garden this year. I’ve loved growing flowers for a long time, and I have had pretty good success with some food crops like pumpkins and zucchini, but I’ve never tilled up a patch of ground to plant rows of food. The very idea of it was intimidating and exhausting. Gardening is one of those activities that the more experienced folks make look easy but that in reality only gets easier with time, experience and the stubborn endurance of untold adversity. I know no one who plants bumper crops their first year of gardening, just like I know no one who can sit down and draft a novel start to finish in their first draft. If this person exists, I don’t think anyone likes them very much.

My gardening goal this year was to simply begin. I decided I’m never going to learn until I’m knee deep in mud and weeds, problem-solving. I operated under the idea that I don’t know what I don’t know and by doing something, anything, I’ll begin to learn. Now, as my harvest comes into season, I can begin to make assessment of my results. In conclusion, my effort was not a complete failure, but I wouldn’t write home about it. As my mom might say, “It wasn’t a flop.”

I like that word — flop. The officiant at Mom’s funeral even based his eulogy on her frequent use of the word. For instance, if she delivered a dessert to a church potluck, she’d quip, “I hope it’s not a flop,” or if she set a steaming pot of homemade chicken and noodles on the dinner table, she was likely to add, “I’m afraid it might be a flop.” She might be concerned that there wasn’t enough salt or that she’d gotten distracted by a phone call in the midst of mixing up the dough, leaving out a key ingredient she’d never realize until someone tasted it. But her cooking always tasted good in spite of her reservations. My attitude about gardening is perhaps more reflective of Mom’s “not a flop” ideology than I’d intended.

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The good news is that I did get some food out of the ground. There was a decent haul of green beans. I dug up some lovely potatoes the other day that paired well with those beans. The carrot patch yielded some of the best carrots I’ve ever tasted. On the other hand, the broccoli failed to thrive. The sweet corn was pitiful. Two rows of eggplant didn’t even come up. I counted a laughable four tomatoes on scraggly stems. One thing I’m glad I did was to keep it small and manageable. It was never going to feed my family all winter but it was also not going to overwhelm me to the point of despair.

While standing at the end of two rows of collard greens (I had such high hopes), I thought about driving over them with the lawnmower. They were heavily damaged by insects, and I couldn’t see anything about them that was salvageable. However, not wanting to give up, I decided to gather them for the chickens. If they liked them, my flop might turn to a success. I tossed them into the coop, and the chicken-joy that ensued was nearly instantaneous. Doc and I became engrossed watching the rooster, Bok-bok, and his three hens, the Cathys (so named for their chatty personalities and because I can’t tell them apart), feast on what moments ago represented abject failure. I wished I had more to give them.

So, while not a complete flop, neither would I say that my first efforts at vegetable gardening were a soaring success. Still, I’ll get back at it next year to try again, adding one thin year of knowledge to a new growing season.  It’s not so different from writing a novel or learning any new skill. What I learn in failure, I can turn to success with repeated, persistent attempts, dragging along my mistakes like hard-won battle scars. It’s been a plague of my existence that I don’t enough enjoy the learning process. I’d rather automatically know something. I don’t want to go to the effort of trying and failing and trying again in order that I might eventually figure it out. But that’s life, princess. Samuel Beckett said, “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail better.”

I’ll not give up. That’s one thing time has taught me, and gratefully, I’m not as put off by failure as I used to be. Besides, sometimes a flop ends up being a happy accident with the power to make somebody else’s (or some chicken’s) day.

Cyn Kitchen is associate professor of English at Knox College and a lifelong resident of the Galesburg area. She is the author of “Ten Tongues” and also publishes creative nonfiction and poems.

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This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Cyn Kitchen: Gardening, green beans, potatoes, carrots - not a flop