Alli Harvey: Suddenly, between outdoors workouts, my thumb turned green

In college, I wrote a creative nonfiction piece for a class about dead houseplants.

I couldn't seem to keep them alive. For instance, a good friend once brought me a gift of herbs planted in a rectangular terra-cotta pot. I set them on my New York City windowsill near the air conditioner because the only daylight that streamed into our apartment was by that particular window.

Even as I watered them and put my face level with their little stems day by day to see how they were doing, I saw them wither and finally die. I clung to the notion that maybe something was still alive, a little. The next time my friend came to visit she sighed and said I should throw the herbs out or at least make a nice sauce with the brittle oregano leaves.

This legacy of killing houseplants (hardly the only incident) haunted me. Over time, while I admired my friends' green thumbs, I figured growing things wasn't in the cards for me.

Still I thought, especially in the wake of years of structured time training for a half-marathon here, a triathlon there – wouldn't it be great to have a more playful way of getting outdoors? Wasn't getting my hands actually in the dirt something that seemed totally, well, me? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to grow things?

A Gahhhden Pahhty

In May, while I was traveling, I got the invitation.

"A Gahhhden Pahhty." My husband e-mailed some friends an invitation featuring my smiling mug bordered by flowers. He said there would be porch cocktails involved and, oh yes, planting.

So, I figured, we were off.

A friend confided in me as we squatted by a newly formed row, sprinkling smelly fish kelp into the soil and poking holes into which to deposit seeds.

"If you don't like gardening," she said, "it's OK. I know it seems like everyone here loves it. But if you decide after this summer that it's not for you, that's all right."

I gave a sigh of relief. She was giving me permission to not like gardening. It seemed like I'd need this ticket out when everything that we were meticulously planting inevitably, and prematurely, went the way of my college-apartment herb garden.

But planting actually wasn't all that hard, and having a garden party was a brilliant idea on my husband's part. All that free labor! — well, in exchange for porch cocktails (Moscow mules, mostly).

Within an hour, garden beds that had emerged and surprised us as the snow melted at our new house were turned. Cardboard was laid down on sections of grass and covered in topsoil. Voila, new beds were created. Friends with pitchforks added mulch and mixed it in. Plants were deposited in holes and watered. Rows of seeds were sown and marked with little cardboard and sharpie signs. A friend brought a full container of finished compost to get my own pile going and loaned me a copy of gardening columnist Jeff Lowenfel's book "Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web."

In short, what had seemed daunting and confusing was done. A garden was planted. We cheered and celebrated. Everyone went home, and then I waited.

And waited.

All week, I crouched once more at eye level with the ground, like I had in college, examining the beds for any progress. I patrolled my yard every day in some classy combination of Crocs and sweatpants, gently misting the seeds as I lugged the green garden hose around.

Even I could see that my soil wasn't perfect — too much clay caused water to pool in the rows. By Week 2, not much was happening. I figured, even if the whole experiment was a bust, at least I'd tried. And at that point I'd enjoyed the endeavor enough to at least try to figure it out again in 2018.

Then the peas popped up. They were all in a row; it was clearly not a mistake or a clever trick of chickweed.

Then, lettuce. How had I not seen them before? Tiny leaves unfurled from the ground.

Soon, red beet leaves, tiny curly kale plants and, one month after I'd planted them, unmistakable carrot leaves in rows. Even the sad-looking cabbage starts picked up — just as promised by the friends who had gifted them to us, saying they were Lazy Mountain starts so while they looked scrawny, they were tough.

I began to feel confident I knew what was a weed and what wasn't — removing anything in the way of my new plants. I consulted a chart online to weed down the tiny seedlings, leaving adequate space for growth.

This gardening thing wasn't without effort, but I liked what the effort entailed — examining conditions and progress, some maintenance, watering and maybe most importantly, admiring and enjoying the plants as they made their way skyward. This was also a totally new way for me to be outside.

Full garden beds

Suddenly, like when I learn a new word and see it everywhere, I started noticing gardens. I saw peonies at farmers' markets and swooned a little. I stopped by the farm stand and bought sunflower starts. I consulted Pinterest for ways to support pea plants (and then ended up buying a cheap metal trellis at the hardware store and lining it with kitchen twine, which worked just fine).

Then, finally, seemingly overnight, the beds became full. Where before were mostly piles of dirt with brave green shoots, now there were full heads of green, purple and red vegetables. And so many flowers and herbs! Nasturtiums took over and began flowering yellow and red, mint overflowed from a wine cask planter, and strawberries cast their red string-like trailers and grew tiny, delicious berries.

I am not a gardening aficionado. Far from it. I have a world of things to learn. But this summer got me hooked and finally thinking that I'm not doomed to be a plant-killer after all. Maybe there is something to putting seeds in the ground and growing them.

Alli Harvey lives in Palmer and recreates throughout Southcentral Alaska.