Bağ adventures

One of my fellow volunteers moved into a new independent housing situation last month. She lives in what we would call in New Mexico the “mother-in-law quarters,” a separate small house in someone’s back yard. The landlord of my friend has hosted foreigners in this little house for many years…people from Europe, other Peace Corps volunteers, everyone. So she’s familiar with non-Azeri ways and expectations. We thought.

My friend got permission to install a vegetable garden in the main yard and her landlord enthusiastically approved. The intention is to have familiar (for my friend) fresh foods which you can’t find easily in rural Azerbaijan such as lettuce, kale, broccoli and summer squash. This is also a chance to introduce these new items to her landlord and co-workers, perhaps expanding their knowledge of gardening methods in the process. Plus, it’s going to be a comfort to my friend to be able to putter in the dirt, brush up against the tomato plants and smell that astringent smell. So Sherry (my friend) asked if I wanted to come help her get the garden started and naturally I jumped at the chance.

The landlord showed us the area for the garden, which looks like it was used for this purpose in the past. As she was showing it, she was very specific about which square meters of the overall rectangle we could use. She has some tulips planted in a few rows, so those were obviously to be avoided. But she specified we should go ahead and use the paths between her rows of tulips. Now, maybe I’m being persnickety, but I think we just need to be worrying about a basic rectangle shape, not a rectangle with legs, so Sherry and I conferred and decided to leave those path areas for her. If she wanted something there, she could choose what to plant herself.

The day we started was just gorgeous…upper teens (Celsius, so low 70s) with a light breeze and lots of sunshine. Tee shirt weather. We began by trying to clear the weeds off of the main garden area and quickly found the soil to be more difficult to work than we’d anticipated. It was just chock full of rocks. Every time we put the shovel or pitchfork in, we’d only get a few inches before being stopped cold. Granted we don’t have hiking boots, but still. You would think we’d be able to dig! Sherry’s director from her organization came by with another of her coworkers and they helped us quite a bit, mysteriously being able to dig down a good six inches. We were so grateful to them; they literally turned the soil for about half of the garden area. It took me just about as long to less-effectively turn an area less than a quarter of the size. Exhaustion was setting in rapidly. We stopped and had çay, during which I discovered that my friend has fantastic Azerbaijani listening comprehension. I am still at the point of hearing words, stopping to translate them in my head and, in the process, completely losing track of what’s being said.

The men left and Sherry and I struggled on with the rocky soil. At one point her landlord came over to where I was raking stones, pointed out the pathways between the tulips and said, “Dig here and here and here.” I told her, “bilerəm,” (I know) then she came and pointed and told me to dig closer to the driveway. Maybe I was grumpy because of how hot and tired I was, but at that point I stopped digging and told her, “Hə, amma çətindir!” (Yeah, but it’s difficult) She seemed non-plussed and asked, “oh, it’s difficult?” like she hadn’t considered that. After that exchange, though, she stopped trying to tell us what to do, which was lovely. If there’s one thing I can say about the people I have encountered in Azerbaijan, it’s that they all feel they know the best way to do something and have no problem showing or telling you how to do it. However, some are really nice about it, and obviously just want to help. There were some construction workers on the property that day, too, and one of them watched us work for awhile then took pity on us, came over and asked Sherry for the shovel, and proceeded to dig until his supervisor called him back to help with something.

We finally got most of the garden area cleared of weeds and decided to stop for the day. I didn’t have to leave until the next afternoon, so we went grocery shopping and made dinner. During the night the wind picked up. We woke to no electricty or heat; each time we tried to light her peç (gas heater) the wind would come down the exhaust pipe and extinguish the flames, so as the temperature dropped outside, it got much colder in her house. Then it rained, and the rain turned to snow.

It’s all in the timing.