ME AND MARIE ANTOINETTE

What has always intrigued me about Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI’s ill-fated wife who met a ghastly death at the guillotine, was her little vegetable garden. 

It was dubbed the Queen’s Grove and flourished directly behind the Petite Trianon, her private sanctuary adjacent to the big house at Versailles. I doubt MA actually messed up her French manicure digging in the soil or weeding rows of cabbages, artichokes and lettuce. But we share a passion, I believe, for wanting fresh vegetables at the ready for a dejeuner salad.

My very first vegetable garden was located in a sunny spot behind the garage of our Dutch Colonial home in Titusville, New Jersey, where I grew up. When I wasn’t waterskiing on the nearby Delaware River with friends, I loved checking out my thriving plot of  beans and tomatoes. 

“I did this!” I‘d think, forgetting the crucial role of sunshine, water, soil, fertilizer et al. It was my miracle, my Lourdes de veggies! I put a seed in the ground and, within weeks, I had fresh green beans on my dinner plate. It never failed to amaze me.

Over the years I planted backyard gardens everywhere I lived. I cultivated peppers, pumpkins, watermelons, butternut squash and eggplants, even cauliflower (until slugs annihilated those creamy white veggies and they turned black overnight, I kid you not.)

Then in December 2019, we moved to a condominium community in the Wells woods. Knowing I couldn’t have a big vegetable spread in the back yard, I left hoes, pitch forks and shovels behind and assumed my gardening days were history.

But several months later, mild Spring breezes swept through our yard. And when the last full moon tide had receded, which is when every Maine gardener knows it’s safe to plant here in Zone 6, my palms began to itch. I found myself gazing mournfully at seed packages in Renys. I wanted to plant vegetables.

But where?  I quickly realized that age, arthritis and an achey back were tilting me in a new direction. I asked my can-do-it-all handyman Fez, “How am I going to grow vegetables and not end up in traction?” 

We agreed that container gardening might work.  “Keep it small and easy, Val,” he told me. So I drove to Agway, bought 8 galvanized tubs and dropped them at Fez’s workshop so he could spray paint them green. He then filled them with his magical loam that ferments all winter long, and  trucked the containers over to my back yard. Then, we spent half an hour placing them. Actually, I directed, he placed.

Planting was a cinch. All I needed was a trowel. I just popped the veggies into the wonderful soil. My “container crop” featured tomatoes, cucumbers, one zucchini, one summer squash, one eggplant for Linda L., one green pepper for Mr. W’s omelets, and enough cilantro to make taco salad ad infinitum. (Plus, the secret reward of container gardening is the minimal weeding.) 

I’m now on my third summer of container gardening. Each year, thanks to Fez’s magical loam and all afternoon sun, I’ve enjoyed bumper crops, often begging friends to take one more zucchini, please, and running out of new recipes for cucumber soup. 

Occasionally, I even think of Marie Antoinette when I pluck yet another tomato for my dejeuner salad, thinking how much fun growing vegetables can be when someone else has done the heavy lifting, thank you Fez.

And here is this year’s Petite Trianon garden. Only one container left to fill!