May has been a busy weather month here in San Antonio. Typically, May always the most severe weather, notwithstanding hurricane season, and precipitation usually peaks in May. We have already had 10 inches of rainfall so far this year, which is the most in over a decade and which makes everyone hopeful.  Even so, all of Bexar County is still under Stage 2 water restrictions and is considered to be in a “moderate drought,” according to Eric Platt, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in the Austin/San Antonio office.

     Yet, we know the heat is coming. In fact, we are already flirting dangerously close to the 100 degree mark and the summer hasn’t even officially started. Last year, we had 75 triple digit days, the most since records began in the late 1800s. Given the way our weather patterns have been going, the 2024 Old Farmer’s Almanac prediction for Texas is hardly big news: “Hold on to your umbrellas … and tune up your AC,” it advises. “Summer is coming early this year, and it may bring the hottest temperatures in recorded history.”

     Okay, so what else is new? The weather is becoming extreme everywhere, SouthTexas has always been hot as Hades, and people, including me, are generally tired of talking about it. After all, why worry about what you cannot control, much less can’t even see coming (such as the sudden devastating Derecho storm in Houston last weekend). Of course extreme weather events make me concerned about climate change, but more immediately, I always think about our poor dedicated farmers who live so vicariously from season to season, crop to crop, who try to make a living while dealing with the whims of Mother Nature. Theirs is a life of hope, despair and frustration that I can’t even imagine living.

     But I do get a small glimpse of that life in my dear husband. He’s a New Yorker who never even saw a farm until we started visiting my relatives in South Jersey as newlyweds but now, over the years, he has truly become a “gentleman farmer.” He has always loved nature, plants and animals and seems just intuitively knowledgeable about the natural world. He built a greenhouse at our first home and, ever since, we have had enough acreage for lawns, trees, and gardens at every house we’ve owned (including here). Most of those years were up East in Connecticut, which came with it’s own winter weather challenges, and then we moved here to San Antonio where the “plant hardiness zone”  is the exact opposite of New England’s.

     When we first moved here after retirement, while backhoes were digging a pool in the back yard that was then no yard at all but an expanse of  dirt, dust, rocks and limestone, a dear friend from Connecticut came to visit.  She stood on our patio, looked out and said, “My goodness. What ever possessed you to move to such a godforsaken place?” I have to admit that even though I am a native Texan, I was thinking the same thing about my darling husband’s insistence while house hunting on “some property” for gardening. But he, my Gentleman Farmer, is nothing if not persistent, patient and optimistic. He had a vision, and he knew that he could transform our acre of parched land into a garden of delight — maybe not a lush garden, mind you, but certainly an orderly and productive one.

     And now, here we are years later with a yard that is the envy of the neighborhood. We have raised beds of flowers and vegetables, we have a stone meditation area called “tranquility base” among a cluster of trees, we have flowering crepe myrtles along the back fence and Texas lilacs in bloom along the side property lines, tropical plantings around the pool, and even a chef-proud herb garden right outside our patio doors. After years of study and trial and error and involvement with the San Antonio Garden Center, my dear Gentleman Farmer has become a master gardener himself. Does he spend hours outside every day, even in the winter as weather permits? Yes. Has he had failures with new experiments? Yes. Has he lost trees and shrubs and gorgeous flowers in un-anticipated weather events? Yes. Have some crops failed and favorite plantings like fruit trees and gorgeous hibiscus met their demise? Yes. But he has the patience and the determination to try and try again. That is the essence of a farmer’s resilience, no matter what the crop.

     Now let me be clear here. My husband and I are not farmland people; we are city people. We like the hustle and bustle of big metropolitan areas, the delights of fine restaurants, the cultural enrichments of museums and live theatrical performances, and beyond that, world-wide travel. Personally, I prefer indoor activities, such as reading, writing  and art quilting though I do love the natural world. I just don’t necessarily want to be out in it, in the heat, the dust, the cold, the bugs, the rugged terrain — eww! 

    Believe it or not, though, even if I’m not a pioneer woman, I can also cook and clean, can and preserve, wash and iron, sew and craft, and generally do all the traditional homemaker things with the best of them. I never took home ec in high school, but as a newlywed, I learned to cook because I love to eat; I learned to sew because I love beautiful fabrics and interior design; I learned to clean because I can’t stand clutter and dirt; I learned to can and preserve because I want to enjoy all the freshness of those peppers, onions, tomatoes, strawberries and other produce that can’t be preserved otherwise. And I absolutely love all the roses and lilies and mums and poppies and wildflowers and irises that my husband grows for me, with which I make floral arrangements in our home (which I also learned through the San Antonio Garden Center), and all the fruits and vegetables, the potatoes, string beans, tomatoes, squashes, corn, peppers, onions, garlic and more that he cultivates in all those raised beds. (Yet, even though I like wine, I did draw the line at stomping the grapes he grew; we just made jelly instead.)

     In a world full of fear, chaos, and controversy, the eternal optimism of all farmers, even gentlemen farmers, gives us a ray of hope for the future. I embroidered a pillow for my husband with a quote from Audrey Hepburn: “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” Gardens may bring but small joys amid life’s greater disappointments, but sometimes they are all we have to cling to. 

     And boy do those fresh spices gathered from outside my patio door make  great Italian food!