"Are We There Yet?"
By Carmen Perr
Creator of Carmen in the Garden
"Are we there yet?" The familiar refrain of youth on a never-ending road trip.
Queasy with boredom, anxious we'll never arrive. "Yes, almost there," our parents say, buying us a little time. That same restlessness has trailed me from the backseat into adulthood. When will I graduate? When will I land my first job? When will I get the promotion? When will I find my person? When will I be married? When will I be… and so on. Enter: the garden.
My garden does not answer my restless questioning. It outright ignores me, it refuses my impatience. There is no placating, “we’re almost there, honey” in a garden. A tomato ripens on its own clock, indifferent. No amount of checking will move it along. I can stake it, water it, provide nutrients, but I cannot hurry it. For someone who has spent years measuring life in milestone achievements, in the next thing acquired, the garden posed a dilemma: let it drive me crazy or surrender to a kind of mercy. It took me just a short while to realize it would be the latter.
Unlike the road trip, in the garden, there is no destination. You never arrive.
The bed I clear in the late fall is the bed I plant in spring is the bed overcome with weeds in summer. A harvest is not an arrival; it’s a reminder to sow again for the next crop. The work loops back on itself, season after season. The question “are we there yet?” simply dissolves.
Somewhere amidst these looping seasons, the undulating patterns, I started to think of the garden as less of a thing to do and more of a craft. To tend a garden is to maintain a practice of patience, over and over, with no diploma at the end to tell you that you've arrived. The word “artisan” is often saved for a select group of people. What artisans share with gardeners is a willingness to work on a material's clock. My kitchen, fed by the garden, asks the same of me. I don't cook from a list of cravings. I cook from what's ready, what's actually good right now. The garden writes the grocery list and I cook the menu it gives me. There is an artisanship to building a meal from what the season offers.
I don’t ask, “are we there yet?” the way I used to. The garden eliminated destinations, so the question evaporated. There is no there. There are only a never-ending list of tasks to complete to set up my plants for success. The fruit that will ripen on its own timeline. The meal I’ll make tonight from whatever looks good. The little kid in the backseat couldn’t wait for the trip to end. I have learned, slowly, on the garden’s clock, to desire the exact opposite. I hope the road goes on. I hope I get to stay in each season as long as it’ll have me, and ask, instead, to never arrive.
Carmen Perr is the creator behind Carmen in the Garden, where she shares her passions for gardening and seasonal cooking with a deeply engaged community of over 1.5M + followers. For over a decade, Carmen has shared her approachable gardening wisdom and practical produce-driven recipes. She has earned a spot as a trusted voice for home cooks and aspiring gardeners looking to reconnect with their food and for a grounded way of living that is still attainable in today’s fast-paced world. She believes good food - and a good life - starts with getting your hands dirty. For more content from Carmen you can visit her Substack Carmen In The Garden.
All photography courtesy of Carmen Perr.