We were recently thumbing through the latest issue of a well-respected literary magazine we usually enjoy very much. This was a special food-themed issue, and tucked towards the end of one article was a line about how having your own vegetable garden, something that everyone did sixty years ago, was now a “vanity project for young hipsters.” It went on to note the irony of something that was the basis of human civilization now providing “the grounds for smug satisfaction.”  Eventually the author was dragging up the image of history’s first hipster, Marie Antionette, tending to her peasant garden outside the gilded walls of Versailles.

It would appear the gardening backlash has begun.

It was bound to happen. People are taking a renewed interest in where their food comes from, as well as looking for ways to trim their grocery budgets. Last year seed companies reported record sales to home gardeners. It’s possible that many people are sick of hearing self-righteous screeds about how starting your own organic vegetable garden will improve your health, bring your community closer together, heal the planet, and reverse the second law of thermodynamics. But last year was a terrible year for first time gardeners (thanks to the wet, cool weather and late blight) and there was much gleeful speculation that many would throw in the trowel. The kids would move on to a new fad, one that didn’t involve quite so much back-breaking labor and icky dirt. And yet, seed sales continue to surge. So gardening is still hip, right?

Maybe “hip” has nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s just the chives.

We wonder how many other novice gardeners are, like us, currently enthralled by the spectacle of last year’s perennials coming back to life. A few weeks ago, our chives were a scraggly mess of roots and spindly threads. We wrote them off as dead. We blamed the ice storm, the climate, our own incompetence. We planned on planting new chives once the threat of late frosts had passed.

Then last month’s issue of Hudson Valley Mercantile came out, containing a recipe for a Spring Harvest Risotto from Gigi owner/chef Laura Pensiero, featuring chive blossoms. Sounded good, but where were we going to get chive blossoms? We wandered out into the garden and there were last year’s chives, back from the dead, sending up dark green stems topped with brilliant purple flowers. Their scent and flavor were far richer than they were last year, as if they needed to die back and grow again in order to ripen.

When you plant a seed, you are committing yourself to a daily embrace of the mystery. Some things will grow, others won’t, and it may not ever be clear why. This can be deeply infuriating, and surely drives many people away from continuing to do it. But if you open yourself up to the uncertainty, you may just find yourself on your knees one cool Spring evening, hunched over tiny purple flowers while a crescent moon rises over the mountains and into the sweet night air. In these moments, the concept of whether or not what you are doing is “hip” evaporates into the darkening sky as you are overwhelmed with a humbling sense of gratitude. It’s a feeling that you are not only a witness to this mystery, but part of it as well. If smug satisfaction were the only reason that anyone grew their own food we’d all still be squatting in caves, fashioning flint arrowheads and carving out a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short existence.

Kristen & Brian PJ Cronin live in Beacon with their garden and cats. Kristen is the Communications & Marketing Associate for Safe Harbors of the Hudson in Newburgh, and Brian is the Development Associate for The Storm King School in Cornwall-on-Hudson. Check out their blog A Rotisserie Chicken and 12 Padded Envelopes on this site, or visit flickr.com/photos/teammoonshine to learn more.