The Garden
- Green Iowa AmeriCorps
- Jun 18
- 7 min read
Nick Blocha
What in this big great world, soaring through space, have I been up to? As the sun rises and sets, as the plants rise and fall, as the water inhales and exhales, as the world changes drastically and rapidly, I have been here, in a place which is to me now an excellent and rare example of humans living in harmony with the rest of life on this rock, which is, as I have said, soaring through the abundance of the infinitum. And what have I been doing? Tending a garden.
Some of my compatriots here at the labs and I have been interested in a garden for some time, but what does that look like? To me it is a space to show off yet another example of cohabitation. As Jordan started arugula, spinach, cherry tomatoes, pepper, and some sunflowers in the windows of the Rierson House earlier this spring, I have been planning the process of what and how we will be planting. With our garden I want not only the things we are going to eat like swiss chard, the three sisters of corn, beans, and squash, but also to include native flowers of the region. Wildflowers of the prairie, sunflowers, poppy, things that will attract our dutiful pollinators, who are the foundation of all other life on Planet Earth.
I want this space to show how we can cultivate what we need alongside and with what the rest of nature needs, an ecosystem. We plan to build and put up another bird house, in hopes to attract a winged neighbor who will keep an eye out and feast upon the crunchy and juicy bugs who might want a bite of the food we would prefer to eat.
Jordan and I spend our weekends playing in the soil, which is another big reason I want a garden and like to use my time working on it. We plot down some of the seedlings we’ve started in the early Spring and spread mulch around their bases to keep the soil dark and moist. It’s important to pay attention to how your plants react to their environment, and to plant when and where you have space. Look and listen to what the plants have to tell you, how they might compete with each other or collaborate, if they’re baking in the sun or need more water. Pay attention to who gets along well together and who doesn’t.
Matt, our facilities manager at the Lakeside Labs, dug up a stretch of turf grass, and brought over some dark Earth he’d acquired from the county for us to plant in. It’s essentially a giant 10ft by 27ft raised bed where we’re putting down the three sisters, along with a row of tall sunflowers to the North, and more to come on the South side. We’re using a variety of methods, figuring out what will work for our plants in our garden. No two gardens are going to be the same, so each one needs to develop its own relationship and techniques. How exciting, to see it in action, to feel our knowledge grow like the seedlings to sprouts, and eventually fruiting plants. We’re trying different techniques, seeing what works for our garden, as each one is always different and unique. Whatever seedlings that sprout, and we don’t have space for here in our plots, we plan to donate to the Spirit Lake Community Gardens from where the food makes their way to the Upper Des Moines Food Pantries for those in need.
It’s good to get people fresh produce, provide spaces to pick fruits right off the tree. We all have, I believe, a right to healthy food. Many of us are disconnected from the process of how our food makes it from energy stored in rays of sunlight all the way to our plates, mouths, and stomachs, where it will be broken down and given back to the cycle. We go to the grocery store, pick a plastic bag of green beans, take it home, wash any possible residue of chemicals from the skin, eat what we can get to, and often toss the rest when it goes bad, spreading the stench of decay through the fridge. In the fridge that smell of the deconstruction of life is a stench, but in a compost pile, which for us at Lakeside looks like an old, metal trash can we turn weekly, and will soon need to expand, it is a smell so sweet to my nostrils, ripe with banana peels, egg shells, and old leaves. It smells rich and vibrant. In a compost pile it is a smell that speaks to me of rebirth and the cycle of life every being prescribes to.
Many of us, humans, are disconnected from that cycle too, the cycle of decay and rebirth. Everything Gaia makes will decay, become food for the mycelium and the bugs, to be transformed again into energy for the growers, so they may one day feed the eaters who will also one day feed the bugs again. We’re all eaters, but we’re no longer all aware of this extensive cycle and process required in order for us to eat.
Our Lakeside garden is about food and the ecosystems we can help foster within our process of growing, yes, but it is also about connection. Connection to that process, to the Earth and those relationships between all the aspects of what we are using and creating space for. It is about slowing down and reconnecting not only with the world around us, the real world so abundant with life, diversity, and magic, but also with ourselves. When we lose that understanding of “other than human,” of our surroundings, we also lose an understanding of ourselves. How are we to know the day without the night, the water without the fire? How are we to know who and what we are without knowing and meeting all we are not? How do we know the value of our food if we have not toiled over the soils, rains, and withered leaves?
Many of us think quite literally in a sense of, “I am not a tomato thus I am not a plant, and have little to no relation to a tomato except for when I slice it and put it on a delicious sandwich.” But if I have to spend my time, my effort, my energy, my thoughts, my emotions, my resources on making a tomato plant grow, or to go out and forage for the wild natives like the Dakota, Ioway, and others before, then I begin to see just how akin we are to all life on Earth. In spending my energy too, I am invested, connected. I have created relationship with the plants in our plots. We are each individually and collectively all a vast ecosystem conjoined in a needed unity to support all life.
I am a sentient ape on a rock, soaring through space which has the ability to grow an abundance of lifeforms. When my hands are covered in soil from a day of “playing” in it, when my muscles are sore from tearing apart old wood pallets in order to reuse what we already have available, I often feel fulfilled in a way I cannot find elsewhere. I’d much rather spend my time actively participating in the process of being alive alongside my Earthly relatives of various species than to sit on a computer and go to the grocery store once a week in order to acrew a plastic bag brimming with plastic bags under the sink, despite usually bringing my own canvas ones.
Like hiking up Stone Mountain in Georgia when I was an adolescent with my friends, the view, the air, the sunshine all felt like it pierced my heart and soul deeper and more fully, filling my cup, my soul, with abundance and life. We had to bike to the mountain then push ourselves to hike up his rocky side. It is a gift to act as steward to the land and water. We must be good kin. Currently, this garden is a gift to me, my learning and growth. It is a gift to the teachers, students, and staff of Lakeside, as we’ll be harvesting the Arugula, Spinach, and Chard soon.
It is to become a gift to others, as the community garden accepts, plants, and tends all we are able to bring into green, leafy life; and the cycle akin to the rhythms deep within us, which many have forgotten, continues. May our garden grow and fill us and all around us with abundance. May it pour over further in waves and ripples, learned in the dapple of shade and light piercing the near-translucent oak leaves. May it be learned in our hearts, hands, and bellies. When we are present, active in our senses, and see ourselves as one small member of the ecosystem around us, filled in abundance with infinitely curious and intelligent members, that’s when we often feel more alive and at home in our own Sapien skin, as well as on this floating rock soaring through the infinitum. That connection to the cycle and life is what I seek. That energy of giving and thus receiving directly, that is why I garden.
About The Author
Nick Blocha is serving as a Land and Water Steward via Green Iowa AmeriCorps at the Iowa Lakeside Labs (ILL) in Milford, Iowa. Sister lab to the state hygienists in Iowa City, ILL analyzes water samples from around the state, hosts researchers and students, artists and writers, and aids in a number of environmental and community efforts with a multitude of partnering organizations and government agencies.
With a background in the arts and storytelling, and as a long-time environmental enthusiast, Nick grew up as a barefoot hippie in the woods of North Carolina and Atlanta, and values the service they can provide and assist with via the GIA program. Nick seeks to focus on the spaces where human society and nature intersect and coexist in harmony.