What my garden taught me

Patience, hard work, and the kind of tending that builds something lasting

I’ve been gardening in Ohio since my children were little. I wanted to teach my then very young daughters something useful that we could begin to learn together, and if you’ve done it too, you know it teaches you things the hard way.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing — and along the way, I’ve picked up a garden’s worth of stories. Here are a few.

I learned to garden from books, from friends, and mostly from trial and error. Now that Connie and I moved to Columbus, we take advantage of a growing season perhaps two weeks longer than Cleveland’s, and put it to good use. Green peppers, which we usually leave on the vine long enough to turn red. Onions, with moderate success. Green beans and wax beans — I prefer the latter, Connie the former.

And of course, tomatoes. Lots of them. Our dog Franklin particularly likes to feast on the cherry tomatoes, I guess he finds them easier to pick when he sneaks to the garden when I take him out at night. Earlier in the summer, when we would let our beloved rescue dog out at night, he would come inside with a green snout from diving into the tomato plants before they’d even ripened (maybe that’s the secret to his long life).

We don’t mind sharing our tomatoes with Franklin. But I didn’t plant them to feed the groundhogs. In Cleveland, there was this groundhog - yes, just one guy - who would gobble down what looked like the whole crop, but only take one bite out of each tomato.

Then there’s the compost – two big bins in the corner of the backyard. Kitchen scraps, yard clippings, the usual. But my favorite addition: a bag of peanut shells from a night at Progressive Field, crushed up and mixed in once we’re home. I get some strange looks carrying the shells out of the ballpark after a Guardians win. But who cares?

That’s the thing about a garden, though. You learn that growing season is a long, slow haul. You take months tending to your garden in order to reap the benefits. You learn patience, because nothing in a garden comes fast. The planting, the staking, the weeding, the waiting - some years the tomatoes come in bold and bright to spice up every salad and some years the groundhogs enjoy a feast while you frustratedly get what they’ve left behind. You keep going either way, because that’s what it takes.

The same is true for folks all across this state.

From steelworkers in Shelby to corn and soybean farmers in Western Ohio, Ohioans show up every day to build something long-lasting and make this country work. They hold this state together.

Lately though, too many people doing that work aren’t getting a fair shot. Prices are climbing, CEOs get salaries 300 times more than their employees, and corporate greed keeps holding hardworking Ohioans back.

Ohioans deserve better. And we need someone willing to do the hard work, even when it isn’t glamorous, and stick with the work of tending to what’s here.

That’s the gardener I’ve always tried to be, and the kind of senator I’ll be, too.

Thanks for reading, and for being a part of this with me.

- Sherrod

🍅🌻🪴A personal note from Sherrod 🪴🌻🍅

There’s nobody fighting for Ohioans in the U.S. Senate right now, and I won’t sit on the sidelines while hardworking families get screwed over by Washington politicians serving themselves.

This campaign is all about changing that – and election analysts say we have a strong shot at winning in November.

But like anything worth growing, this campaign doesn’t get there on its own. It takes people showing up and pitching in, day after day.

So today, whether you’ve got a garden in bloom or a succulent on your windowsill, will you chip in to help us grow this campaign all the way to victory?