The Green House Journal chronicles seasonal harvests of the fruits, vegetables, and herbs growing at The Green House, my urban prairie on Detroit’s east side.
March 14, 2023
Spring Calling
Like the bulbs and the bees, tree leaves and dormant plants, when spring is on the horizon, I, too, come anew. Words by Lyndsay C. Green; Video by Marcus D. Green
It seems that every year, around the same time, my body begins to bend toward the sun. To a lighter diet, movement, hydration, and most importantly, to prayer.
Though our cultural calendar designates March 20 as the start of spring, my spirit starts to blossom a bit sooner. Just days before March 1, I started a rigorous 31-day diet plan to help kick-start some healthy eating habits. I dusted off my gym membership tag and got back into daily workouts and started parking blocks away from my destinations to encourage brief walks, even in the rain or snow — feeling the elements on my skin has a natural healing effect. I booked 12 sessions of acupuncture and after a brief hiatus, as I always do, I returned to church.
My second Sunday in the sanctuary was an enlightening experience. The delivery of the message was especially loud. The preacher was lively and filled with joy in a way that made him shout with praise, the worship team sang with gladness, and yet I received the sermon so tenderly it was as if it was whispered to me. During the service, I decided to embark on a week-long fast.
I wouldn’t fast from food — the diet called for enough limitations — but rather social media and television. Throughout the week, it was revealed to me that I should refrain from the podcasts that helped pass the time as I cooked and music that drowned out my thoughts while I drove. The fast, I understood, was to allow God’s voice to be the loudest in my life.
I touched on this in a previous post, but it deserves some expounding, which I plan to do more thoroughly in a future entry: For me, farming and food sovereignty is spiritual. Tending the land and nourishing our bodies with the fruits of that labor is the most God-honoring relationship with our food source that we can have.
So when the message that resounded the loudest was a calling back to my garden, I knew why.
The garden embodies wellness. It awakens all of my senses at once. Among the flowers, I catch whiffs of hyssop and beside the herb garden I’m intoxicated by sage and mint. With a childlike wonder, I marvel whenever I catch a glimpse of a hummingbird fluttering toward the pollinators. At times, I’ll jump back after scraping the backs of my hands against the prickles on the stems of zucchini vines or take comfort in the sound of a kitten purring on a bale of hay, and the sweet juice of a ripe strawberry is all the reward after hours tending the garden.
There are still flurries of snow melting off the tips of my curls as we speak and the icicles that cascade off of the landscaping at the entrance to my house are like doormen welcoming me home. It’s too early to begin direct-sowing seeds here in Detroit, but, like the snowdrops that are already starting to peek through my garden pathways, I’m ready to get growing.
I’m already strategizing the placement of the broccoli and the fruit trees, carrots and onions and a spot for corn.
In the meantime, I’ll be cleaning and rearranging my patio to start sowing seeds indoors. I’m also hoping to welcome some bees to the garden for honey this year and to give a valiant effort at successfully composting.
This time is for planning, preparing and researching new methods, and for embracing a renewed spirit of wellness.
I only hope this year, with my mind, body and spirit aligned, that the energy and clarity of spring lasts through the seasons.
Summer 2021 Harvest
Fresh Takeout
When food shortages left grocery store shelves barren and carryout became a trend, millions rolled up their sleeves to plant seeds and grow their own food. I was one of them. Words by Lyndsay C. Green; Photos by Gerard + Belevender
On a balmy Sunday in July, I found myself in my backyard in a pair of gauchos stained with dirt. They were worn at the knees from kneeling in mulch at my budding homestead. Sweat glossed my forehead and beaded at my temples, dampening the tendrils framing my face and eventually creating soft curls weighed down by salty droplets. The palms of my hands, opposite my knuckles, hardened with calluses from countless hours shoveling compost into the raised beds I built by hand, as well as the gravel that now paves a walkway between perennials and tomato plants.
Soulful gospel music blared in my headphones and, in a flash, it hit me: Somewhere along the course of the pandemic, I’d morphed into my mother.
Though I’d been standing in my yard on Detroit’s east side, the experience transported me back to the days at my childhood home in Mount Vernon, NY, a small suburb of NYC steps away from the Bronx. On any given summer day, my mother—an avid gardener and liturgical dancer—could be found planting zinnias and cosmos with the song to her latest choreography bouncing off of the rose bushes and hostas. I’d peek out of my bedroom window to find her pirouetting occasionally with a trowel in-hand. Dirt smudged across her freckled cheeks like war paint.
Somewhere along the course of the pandemic, I’d morphed into my mother.
The benefit of growing fresh, organic produce is manipulating it into creative dishes for my friends and family to enjoy.
The garden was the last place I wanted to be growing up. A city girl at heart, I much rathered frolic in the concrete jungle that is NYC than to get tangled in the weeds with my mother at our suburban Westchester home. But today, in the midst of a global emergency when all communication with my mother was relegated to sporadic FaceTime calls clumsily facilitated by recreation assistants at her nursing home, I was called to the garden. In my case, not only to sow floral seeds as my mother did, but to grow my own food.
I wasn’t alone in my yearning to get out into the yard and start a vegetable garden. George Ball, chairman of Atlee Burpee & Co.—one of the more popular seed suppliers among home gardeners—says the company sold the most vegetable seeds in its 144-year history in March 2020. Johnny’s Selected Seeds experienced a similar fate, seeing a 270% rise in sales that same month. Suddenly, folks I was following on social media went from amateur bakers to regenerative gardeners, graduating from banana bread to heirloom tomatoes.
Ball says the spikes are consistent with sales records during historic calamities, including the oil crises of the 1970s, the stock market crash of ’87, and the dotcom bubble burst of 2000. Call it a trend or human instinct to gain control of our own food supply when times are unknown, but through a year in isolation grew an appeal to return to the earth.
But today, in the midst of a global emergency … I was called to the garden.
As a restaurant critic and food writer, I felt compelled to support Detroit’s restaurant industry, which, without much government intervention was—and continues to be—in dire need of patronage. Out of necessity, many establishments conceptualized ways for customers to conveniently and safely access their food. Some signed on with third-party online ordering apps and delivery services, while others created concise carryout menus. Some even reinvented their businesses to offer to-go cocktails, a feature that appealed to anyone looking for a semblance of a social life during a global lockdown.
As easy as it became to order takeout and support Detroit’s dining scene, my eye wandered elsewhere. Yes, I ordered online and purchased copious lattes at café walk-up windows. But I also honed the art of starting seeds and watching them mature into edible artwork. I also began supporting local farmers who recognized the importance of food sovereignty well before COVID-19 posed a threat to the food supply chain.
If I’m honest, the impetus of my passion for farming was a spiritual calling. As I write this in fact, I imagine it was similar to my mother’s calling to Christian ministry. The voice, she says, came in a whisper as she sifted through our strawberry patch. Though there wasn’t a voice that approached me in the garden, there was a force that got me there. As I reported on food shortages, as well as inaccessibility to fresh, affordable, nutrient-dense foods in marginalized communities, I was reminded that we have everything that we need in nature. By planting seeds and nurturing their growth, we have the ability to nourish our bodies.
Restaurants, of course, are a welcome delight, but also a privilege reserved for those of us fortunate enough to afford dine-in experiences. In Detroit, grocery shopping and access to organic produce, unfortunately, is also a privilege for many. A predominantly-Black city, Detroit is known largely as a food apartheid where inner city communities turn to liquor stores and gas stations for dairy products. Fast-food joints provide the easiest access to prepared meals. These are the same communities plagued with the largest numbers of fatal, diet-related illnesses, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease—these, in turn, are the same illnesses that place these communities most at-risk for COVID-19. On the drive to my own neighborhood, which borders the affluent Grosse Pointes, the aroma of fried foods is an indicator that I’ve crossed city lines.
My eyes have widened to these injustices and the idea that growing our own food is a form of activism that could help mitigate food insecurity in our own city and beyond.
A number of other factors have fueled my penchant for urban farming. Whether growing our own food, enrolling in community-supported agriculture, or frequenting local farmers markets, incorporating homegrown foods into our diets has immense power to change us in more ways than one. Opting for that carrot from Keep Growing Detroit or the onion from Rescue MI Nature Now over the same vegetables shipped from another coast, not only fosters our own physical health, but the economic health of our local food system, too.
From a spiritual perspective, it is my belief that growing our own food is one of the greatest forms of gratitude for the gifts that have been provided to us in nature. Tending to our gardens shows an appreciation for all life forms—including plant life, which sustains human life. Without coating our foods in harmful pesticides, or genetically modifying them to fit the societal standards of good food, we’re accepting the notion that our food sources are perfect in their natural state. Bumped, bruised, or misshapen, they’re perfectly designed and therefore perfectly suited to nourish us.
Plus, have you tasted a garden tomato plucked off of the vine? Peeled open the parachute that encases a tomatillo to reveal the verdant confection inside? Smelled the aroma of basil and rosemary plants as they sway in a breeze? Watched acorn squash crawl away from its own patch to clasp onto anything in its path as if singing Diana Ross’ “Reach Out and Touch?”
Research cites that gardening has a positive impact on mood and mental health, too. A 2020 study in the Twin Cities showed that vegetable gardening can significantly promote emotional well-being.
I didn’t need the academics to support this idea, though. My mother, the careless lady who danced barefoot in our garden all those years ago, was known for her lighthearted spirit and toothy smile. Her boisterous laugh couldn’t be contained. Her upbeat energy infectious.
Of all of the benefits of gardening—vegetables or otherwise—inheriting a fraction of the joy the garden brought my mother, is all I need.
The Green House Journal is a creative project, where I merge my loves of farming and publishing. I’m still processing exactly what that looks like so bear with me as I sort out the format of these essays each season. If you’re interested in receiving my next journal entry via email in newsletter form, please share your email address via the contact form on my About page.
Lyndsay C. Green 