Janice Wu/The Globe and Mail
Three weeks ago, I left my garden in Edmonton.
I moved to Toronto for a new position with The Globe and Mail. The drive, roughly 3,300 kilometres, was shorter by six hours through the United States.
Of all the things I had to pack – books, clothes, furniture – it was vegetables nurtured over hundreds of hours in the summer that I could not leave behind.
The night before the moving truck arrived, a neighbour pointed out that my cabbages, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and turnips would likely be frowned upon at the border. I called an entry station in North Dakota, which confirmed my fall harvest would be seized. [Editor’s note: Reporter detained in horticultural security threat!]
Panic set in.
I planted my first garden in May, 2017. There was a large plot behind my apartment building, but for the first few years, I paid little attention and did not get involved. Occasionally, when I came home, there would be a bag of fresh vegetables outside my door, from the neighbours who partook in the garden. Curiosity got the best of me.
Myles, the fellow who prepared the patch of land each spring, renting a tiller and churning up dirt, asked me to join in.
I was assigned a row about three metres wide and 13 metres long. Myles had two rows beside mine. There were a handful of us. We were neighbours, but until the garden brought us together outdoors, we had known one another only enough to wave.
As we sowed seeds, friendships grew. We weeded together. We traded beans for broccoli, carrots for cauliflower, Swiss chard for squash. Myles’s beets were closely guarded and off-limits.
Zucchini, you couldn’t give away.
The garden became my happy place. Produce grew despite my worst efforts. On summer nights, when it stays light in Edmonton until nearly 11 o’clock, I weeded with snowshoe hares as companions. I fretted about powdery mildew and unpredictable weather.
The first year, I discovered how much I had to learn. Myles spent as much time in my row as his. The pumpkins I was so excited about suddenly stopped growing. I had unknowingly purchased seeds for miniatures. [Ed. note: Mini pumpkins!!] My cucumbers fell short. Tomatoes were tiny. I had grown a garden fit for a dollhouse.
Over time, as my thumb grew greener, my vegetables grew fat and sprawling. Gardening in Edmonton is like few other places because of the long hours of sunlight. Pumpkin vines can grow six inches a day.
The more I dug into the dirt, the more I loved it. I watered three times a day. I am allergic to bees, yet in the garden they became friends. Birds and butterflies flitted around. A cardinal came to visit almost every day. Magpies hunted for worms.
The garden became my obsession. I taught myself to pickle. I made broccoli soup by the pot load and tomato tarts by the dozen. As the temperature plunged, I tucked blankets around my cucumbers to protect them from frost.
This summer, I built a wooden box to help with growing conditions, laid it in the soil and filled it with broccoli, carrots and onions. The garden took off like never before. Confidently, I placed pots of habanero peppers and tomatoes outside my back door.
Early on the morning of July 2, I woke up to find my Dancing with Smurfs stolen by drunk passersby.
Undeterred, I bought more, and strawberries to go along with them. Feeling sorry for me, the folks at the seed store gave me a discount.
By the beginning of August, I had harvested two crops of broccoli. There were more carrots than I could eat or give away. Myles and I grew Yukon gold potatoes. People in the neighbourhood stopped to take pictures of the garden. The gardeners – myself, Myles, Marlena, Jordan, Danielle, Ellen and Emma – had bonded.
On Sept. 17, as I prepared to leave Alberta for Ontario, I placed a cooler bursting with carrots on the moving truck. Later that night, I said goodbye to the garden. In the back of my Jeep was a box jammed with nearly 20 kilograms of vegetables.
I still didn’t have a plan for my beloved bounty, but I wasn’t leaving it behind. I was afraid of being caught if I tried to smuggle them across the border. I mulled taking the longer route through Canada. As I drove south and east through Saskatchewan, figuring what to do with them was all I thought about.
My editor suggested leaving them at the side of the road. [Ed. note: With a “Free Vegetables” sign of course.] They were my babies, my summer’s work. I wouldn’t. But in the middle of the weekend and the middle of nowhere, I wasn’t sure what to do.
I looked online for the nearest UPS store that might be open. I found one closing in an hour, an hour away in Saskatoon.
I rushed in lugging the box and told the manager I needed to ship them across the country. He weighed the package. Ninety bucks, it would cost. I gave him some tomatoes and turnips. He lowered the price to $75. [Ed. note: Not on expenses.]
Having nowhere else to send them, and having phoned to ask the night before, I shipped them to my editor.
Four days later, she found the box on her veranda and opened it to check on the contents. She called to report a few casualties: two tomatoes that didn’t make it, a broken zucchini, a squishy turnip. Most were no worse for the journey.
It is Thanksgiving, and my fridge is full of vegetables. I left the garden in Edmonton, but everything it gave to me has come with me to Toronto.