What a month! September 2008 will surely go down in history as one of the most significant of the modern era with four weeks of massive bank failures, volatile share prices, and even serious doubts about the future of free market capitalism itself. How’s your household faring?
You might describe the Russell family as “alert, but not alarmed”. Things are starting to mount up. Our superannuation has taken a hammering. Interest rates have come off a bit but there is now the spectre that they might go back up as credit tightens. We’re making fewer trips because petrol prices remain high. And then there are the elephants in the room that everyone seems to have forgotten – global warming and interminable drought. What’s a bloke to do? Well, at times like these, I reckon it pays to have a good hard think about how best to respond, and then act.
I’ve learnt much in the decade or so I’ve been a serious gardener, but the thing that stands out the most is this: to garden is to hope. To plant a tiny carrot or lettuce seed, and watch it germinate and grow is as good a vote of confidence in the future as any I’ve come across. The very act of growing things makes gardeners the most hopeful group of people on earth. My wife once asked me what I would do if I was told I had just a few months left to live. I told her that I’d make a garden.
I for one am not buying the line from our politicians that if we just sit tight, everything will work out fine. Our banks are well capitalised. Well regulated. Really? This isn’t just a distrust of politicians but the reality that I have three little kids to feed and nurture, yet I’m being urged to simply bask in the glow of our well-regulated system and just ride it out. Sorry, but an issue as major as the credit crisis demands a response other than passivity, and the way I see things, that response can either be negative and fearful, or it can be positive and life affirming.
I consider myself an optimist. So my response to plunging markets is to plunge a spade into worm-filled soil. In the face of speculative $700 billion bailouts, my reaction is to plant a bean seed, speculating that it will sprout, grow and bear fruit. As trillions of dollars worth of paper derivatives blow up in the faces of Wall Street fat cats, I’m driven not to despair like the window jumping bankers of 1929, but to things that are tangible and real. I make compost. I plant seedlings.
The stark reality is that we’re facing a number of calamities that will have a restrictive effect on the ways in which we’ve lived. Our lifestyles will change. But history teaches us that calamity is nothing new, human beings have a tremendous capacity to endure hard times, and best of all, brighter days tend to arrive like a newborn baby after a time of blood, sweat and tears. Senior readers of this column, those of you who may have lived through two world wars and the Great Depression, will attest to this principle.
For those of us who have only known prosperity and relative wealth, there’s never been a better time to get into the garden. If you’re not sure where to start, why not join a gardening club, or subscribe to a decent gardening magazine. Have a yarn to older, more experienced gardeners or enrol in a gardening course to teach you the basics. You might even want to get really radical and knock back a Saturday night out with your mates to watch Gardening Australia. The point is that it’s time to get fair dinkum, and the best place to start is in your own backyard.
During the 1930′s Depression almost every household grew a decent proportion of their vegetables and fruit. Lemon trees grew in tandem with outdoor dunnies and pumpkin vines sprawled happily over boundary fences. People grew vegies to save money, which was far tighter than it is now, but I get the sneaking suspicion that they actually enjoyed the fruits of their labour. How many times have you heard someone from that era say “Times were hard, but we never felt poor”?
I’m not trying to be romantic here, but I think it’s important to realise that life goes on, and you can live very richly indeed by growing some food. You don’t need to become a hippy or strive for self-sufficiency. It can be as simple as popping a few seeds in the ground or a container and nurturing them to maturity. You face the same choice as I do, and my hope is that you choose to cultivate a garden, which when you boil it down to its essence, is an investment in real living.
First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 7th October, 2008
