MOULTRIE, Ga.  — I used to be an avid gardener. It was a rite of spring. And my wife would often ask me why I planted a garden when I could buy the produce much cheaper? Well, then why play the guitar when I can just turn on the radio?

I would mostly respond, “because.” I got that a lot from my dad, but he would say, “Because I said so.”

My dad always planted a garden and his dad before him. I could probably trace that tendency all the way back to the potato famine in Ireland. So I got that dirt under my fingernails, if not in my blood, at a very early age.

Much like my dad, I like to see things grow. It’s strange that I would choose to grow butterbeans in my adult life when I detested picking them so much in my youth.

My dad planted butterbeans like hard times would get harder and those beans would be the difference between starvation and survival — like they held the earth together and kept the stars in alignment. I always thought he planted the longest butterbean rows in Grady County. His position was that short rows were not efficient and were troublesome to cultivate. Those rows would curve around the terrace adjacent to the corn field, and I couldn’t see their end. It was demoralizing even though I knew an acre was an acre no matter how long the rows. But when I carried on that tradition, I did it with shorter rows. A psychological thing, I suppose.

In those days, I found some therapy in gardening. It’s a good place to think because most often one finds himself there all alone. It’s hard to get a crowd in a butterbean patch. I would offer someone butterbeans, and the first thing they would ask was are they already picked.

My dad and I used to talk a great deal while picking butterbeans. He would reflect upon his boyhood and offer advice on my future. It was a good place to draw perspectives — to reflect upon what is important in life … besides butterbeans.

A half-serious gardener can get close to the earth — to his roots. It’s basic and unpretentious. How often I would think of that buffalo grass that would grow six inches after a night’s rain. It was a battle. I would think of that challenge and say, “It’s just you and me, and I’m going to win.” Well I didn’t always win but I left evidence of a good fight.

Many times while trying to salvage my produce … to outwit Mother Nature … I would think of what that poet said: “Life is real, life is earnest and the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art to dust returneth was not spoken of the soul.”  I would look around and see how many rows were left to hoe and think to myself, that poet damn well better be right.

Serious gardeners like to compare notes and show off their handiwork. It’s therapeutic to them. They sympathize with each other’s challenges … the blossom rot, mildew and nematodes, etc.

I noticed through the years that heated differences of politics and religion could be put aside when the subject was diverted to pole beans and crowder peas. It’s sort of a neutral zone where tempers can cool and philosophies that might run perpendicular can fold back into their hulls for more nourishment and enlightenment.

I used to wonder if world leaders would not be more responsive to their calling if they would spend one afternoon a week in a bean patch, close to the earth, close to the grass and bugs, in the heat, with dirt under their fingernails and maybe influenced by a line of poetry.

I also wondered if there were more gardens to be tended, would there also be fewer psychiatrists?

Just wondering.

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)