The Philosophy of Gardening

Translator's Note

I began this translation in late March 2020. The effects of the pandemic lockdown were beginning to make themselves felt. Not much later, at least here in Ontario’s plant hardiness zone 6, the planting season began. Like many well-intentioned part-time gardeners also juggling full-time freelance work, family life, and, in my case, a flock of twenty or so chickens, four goats, two dogs, three cats, and a rabbit, I didn’t get my seeds started on time, so near the end of May I found myself scrambling to find seed packets and seedlings at our local farmers’ markets and garden centres. Unbeknownst to me, the pandemic had not just unleashed a wave of DIY home renovation projects among bored, socially isolated homeowners (causing a lumber shortage—imagine!), it had also awoken a need to feel a sense of control, self-sufficiency. I was affected even more by the seedling shortage because I had, during the mid-winter seed catalogue perusing season, when garden enthusiasts envision the perfect garden, resplendent with brightly coloured flowers and perfectly weeded rows of vegetables, resisted the urge to order more seeds, choosing instead to use up the seeds in my stash. Whether your hobby is gardening, knitting, sewing, woodworking, or making jewellery, I’m sure you’ve experienced the guilty pleasure of spontaneously increasing your collection of “someday I’ll use this…” items. Unfortunately, I discovered that many of the seeds in my stash had lost their power to germinate. Having operated a certified organic herb and vegetable farm for years (following an escape from Toronto in 2004), I was quite confident in my seed-planting abilities, and I knew this was not a user error.

And so translating this book became a consolation of sorts. I could garden vicariously through the texts I was translating. The pieces in this book cover a range of topics, and I found myself caught up not just in finding the best phrase to do justice to the original German, but also pondering my own relationship with gardening.

Starting with the bigger, metaphysical picture, where does my garden begin? Does it begin with the lawn around our home, forming a boundary between our (somewhat) structured life and the unruliness of nature? At one time, when we lived in Toronto, we saw our xeriscaped, naturalized garden as a way of keeping the concrete jungle at bay. But now we live on one hundred acres, so the lawn around our house acts as a barrier of sorts between ourselves and the surrounding woods, and whatever is lurking there. This includes unwelcome, intrusive pests, like ticks and mosquitoes and blackflies, which are less able to propagate in a mowed lawn.

The act of planting seeds is more of a detail-oriented task, done on a much smaller scale than sitting on a lawn tractor. I found myself wondering if I was tolerant of the self-seeded “volunteers” in my vegetable garden. Considering the random scattering of sunflower plants throughout my vegetable bed (thank you, chickadees) and my joy at finding early spring lettuce reseeded from the plants I’d allowed to bolt the summer before, I’d say yes. Does this make me more tolerant and benevolent to the differences of others? I’d like to think so.

Speaking of vegetable gardens, to what extent is gardening a way to control nature? To be able to enjoy the bounty of my vegetable garden, the weeds have to be kept under control. This past spring, I adopted a “work smarter, not harder” approach and let go of the tidily maintained rows of vegetables of my German youth and mulched the entire garden with hay. The result? A bounty of potatoes in a drought-plagued summer, where others had only paltry crops. Fewer hours spent weeding and watering. And less work meant less resentment toward my “hobby,” a moniker I began to question while translating one of the pieces that discusses the role gender plays in gardening. Was I keeping a garden because of my sense of obligation as a caregiver, or is it an activity I enjoy filling my limited leisure time with? Or do I simply need a more tangible sense of achievement when I’m not at my computer marvelling at the process of the words broadcast by my brain being sown in tidy rows across my screen?

Translation is a bit like gardening. It is a lengthy, gradual process. It involves weeding out words and expressions that don’t quite fit. It’s about creating an arrangement of words that fit into the landscape of the text. Like a plant that doesn’t flourish in different surroundings, sometimes a turn of phrase needs careful attention so that its translation suits its new language environment. It is a solitary task, just as gardening quite often is. While gardening can be done in the company of others, only one set of hands can place a tiny seed in the earth. You plant the seed, and then you step back and let the seed do its thing. You return later to nurture it, whether through watering, or weeding, or pruning. Translation is much the same. Translate. Let it sit. Come back to it, weed out the words that don’t fit, prune out the unnecessary tangents that bear no fruit, nurture the text by carefully massaging it until you get it right. And even then, the expert eyes of a good editor are invaluable (thank you, Leigh). Like gardening, translation is a learning process. Just as a gardener is not born with a green thumb, growing up speaking more than one language does not make you a translator. Gardening is something you learn by doing, an experience lived, lessons learned. The art of translation is also not learned overnight. It requires living the language, not just the one you are translating from. And it is also extremely helpful to have experience in the subject matter.

As I write this, eleven months have passed since I began this translation. It is not yet too late for me to order seeds, to connect with local growers for seedlings, to dream of my vision of the perfect garden. This vision does not include impeccably weeded rows of vegetables, nor the expectation that every seedling must have been started by yours truly. But it does include taking the time to enjoy a good book outdoors, in the garden. Once mosquito and blackfly season has passed, of course.

Wishing you a perfect gardening season.

Karen Caruana has been practising the craft of translation for over fifteen years now, working from German and French into English. When not mulling over words, she is an avid gardener (she once operated an organic herb farm), a passionate environmentalist, teaches yoga, and enjoys spending time outdoors. She lives in Marmora, Ontario.