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Just because I don’t have a garden in my backyard doesn’t mean I haven’t been gardening this summer. I’ve watered and weeded in all types of weather. I spent several rainy mornings with my knees in the dirt, fingertips stained with mud. While on hot days, the sun looked over my shoulder, leaving a ring of red in a spot revealed by my outstretched arms, a smiley shape between my shirt and my pants, a place I never imagined needing sunscreen.

I watched sprightly carrot tops struggle to stay afloat in a sea of grass and celebrated when, after a concerted effort to remove the moist clumps wriggling with sea tentacle roots, those sprigs seem to stand a little taller. They needed a tall drink of water, weak as they were from the effort and a little lonely after losing their grass support system.

Peas and beets, turnips and lettuce, spinach and potatoes all grow in this garden, wowing the visitors to the Creamer’s Field Wildlife Refuge. They come expecting to see birds and dragonflies at work in their winged efforts. The garden reminds them of home.

They admire the huge potato plants, sometimes mistaking them for tomatoes. They wonder why we plant in exposed beds (to get warmer soil) and if that doesn’t dry them out faster (it does). Sometimes they even crouch down beside us and pull a few weeds as we adjust the hoses so the garden gets a good soak.

I’ve learned my lessons, too. That knotweed is actually a weed, even though it sounds like “not a weed” when my mentor advises me whether or not to pull its bamboo-jointed stalks from along the edges of the rows. What I don’t know about the long, creeping rhizomes with zigzagging twigs could fill a produce share bursting with kale and chard.

We do encourage the occasional interloper, letting unidentified plants thrive out of the way of vegetables until their identities are known, but I pull this intruder before it can set up shop. Before it can sprout stems that grow to 10 feet tall, producing sprays of tiny white flowers that hypnotize with their sweet scent while the plant takes over.

We let the borage grow, though, thinning it out as the hearty survivors sprout succulent cucumber-tinted leaves and star-belled flowers. A new lemon-scented herb is also welcomed. Who knows how large those clover leaves will get. We’ll rub our fingers in the velvety petals, sniffing them for a pick-me-up as we work the unending rows.

Most locals know that Creamer’s was once a dairy, its proud barn still carrying the family name on the roof. In the years since Anna Creamer maintained a sprawling garden to feed the household and visiting workers, local volunteers have resurrected and tended a smaller version. Recently it’s been staffed by a group of parents whose children run through the rows like mice in a maze.

While the grownups tend to the garden, the kids make forts under the towering spruce tree and climb the chokecherry’s limbs. They run in circles, sometimes pausing to pick peas from the teepee (tee-pea) trellis or inspect a beckoning nasturtium. They make chains out of dandelions and catch long-horn whitespotted sawyer beetles in mid flight.

Not all the beneficiaries of this garden are human. A resident woodchuck claimed its share of the bounty this year before the starts were even planted, sneaking out at night to nibble its favorites. These low to the ground mammals with the tiny paws of a poodle can run as fast as a dog. Strict vegetarians, they don’t confine themselves to woody plants.

Our garden provided a nice complement to the bed and breakfast it set up under the Visitor’s Center porch. Each week we’d return to see what the animal had favored while we were gone. Once a family of woodchucks nested right in the middle of the garden, ignoring the fist shakes and epitaphs hurled their way when they’d pop out their heads to inspect the day laborers at work.

Could all these woodchucks be the descendants of animals that watched the cows being milked, the cream separated and poured into glass jars, the fields planted in field peas and oats. Have they been nourishing waves of offspring from this garden while seeking refuge under the same farmhouse that sheltered the humans?

Maybe now they’re witnessing a new generation of farmers coax a meal from the earth, while the next plays along the fringes and learns the lesson of what it takes to make a garden grow.