Tag: gardening

on the particularity of living things

When I was a girl we used to visit my grandmother in Lorain, Ohio, every summer. It was miserably humid and buggy, and, coming from Colorado, a shock. But it was pleasant to sit in the screened porch on the ancient squeaky glider chair, the seat cushions sticky on the backs of my thighs. I was frequently exiled there after dinner to eat my ice cream, which I liked to mush up. This was a jolly punishment for not “politely” eating my food “as it was served.” The nights were lively with insect chorus.

One evening after it began to cool we went for a walk, and my stepmother showed me her elementary school and various childhood landmarks. We passed the former home of a mean old neighbor who didn’t like the children to walk on his grass.

“He would yell at us. So when we walked by on the sidewalk, we’d occasionally, casually, step one foot on his precious lawn.” She demonstrated.

Both these women had been raised in Lorain, and as they reminisced, I noticed that trees loomed large in their memory and imagination—this one excellent for climbing or that one lost to disease.

I’d had a special tree in my own early childhood, when I’d lived in Connecticut, a maple. But I didn’t know the names of any other trees. Evergreens were generically “pines” for me, and I felt ashamed and jealous as each tree on our walk that evening was named and particular.

“I wish we learned tree names in school,” I said.

“We didn’t learn these names in school,” my stepmother said, astonished. “Everyone just knew!”

Everyone just knew.

As a gardener, I have since learned many names of plants and trees, of course, and I love that those names often tell a story. I recently reread Penelope Lively’s Life in the Garden, which reminded me that Anna Pavord’s The Naming of Names has been on my TBR pile for years. I’ve hauled my beautiful hardcover copy off the shelf.

But forty years after that evening stroll in Lorain, even the quickest perusal of any Facebook gardening group will confirm that very few people just know. I don’t think it’s difficult to suss out how this general illiteracy came about. But it does seem to me to be a symptom of something ugly and unwieldy, a peculiar and tone deaf relationship with the outdoors, with the scraps of land in our care.

Two years ago on July 4, as I was coming home from a socially distanced barbecue, my first outing in months, every intersection in my neighborhood was bright with explosives. The blocks, the squares, became bizarre cubes of light, the grid eerily visible, three dimensional. I worried about fire, about our urban wildlife.

On this Independence Day I’m anticipating more of the same commotion. And I’m remembering a late June backpacking trip on Mt. Tahoma, pictured here. And I’m thinking about constitutional and environmental crisis. I’m also appreciating my stepmother as a child, leading the charge with tiny rebellious steps on that old codger’s lawn—and I love that she and my grandmother had tools to see and appreciate the variety and particularity of living things.

life outside the cubicle & the economics of abundance—plum perfection

For weeks last year I watched ten lonely plums ripening on my tree, checked their progress almost daily. And then one morning they were gone—which was really too bad, as I was pandemically unemployed and had plenty of time for preserving. 

This year, though! I processed about thirty pounds, gave away at least that many, and still quite a few went to the squirrels and birds, and, probably, but I’d rather not think about it… the rats. *shudder*

I planted the tree in 2000, and thanks to skillful pruning by my pal Steve—affectionately known by my son as The Tree Killer, a moniker always spoken in a quiet, menacing tone—it’s a lovely shape now, and the view from the sidewalk under its limbs is one of my favorites.

28 March, full bloom

This year a favorite former student and her boyfriend came over to help with the canning, and it was a long, glorious day, laughing and telling stories. (People! Breathing inside my house! For a month or so there, after vaccination, I felt almost normal again.)

Years and years ago, my friend Linda taught me about canning, when we were mothers of young children. That was another long, hot day in my kitchen. She had brought grapes from her arbor for jelly, and I had apples from the trees for sauce and apple butter. Neither of us were working outside the home then, and the thought of finding a job so I could fork over my money for childcare was overwhelming. Why would I want someone else to raise my children? This was in the mid-90s, and housing was, well, less unaffordable. It hadn’t yet fully dawned on me that two incomes were required to own a home, that the economy had shifted.

There was a moment at the stove that I will never forget, as I was pouring hot grape goo into the strainer contraption. In a whoosh, I realized how happy I was. I turned to Linda and whispered, “This is so much more satisfying than sitting in a cubicle all day.”

She whispered back, “I know!”

I’ve wondered at this for the last twenty-five years, the question of value and time, the economics of gardening and preserving. I bought the plum tree, “Beauty,” from Raintree Nursery for $19.95. Several years later, I was astonished when I saw that the price for that same tree was shockingly high, something like $200. (Perhaps a smidge less, but it was wildly more than $20.) I mentioned this to my favorite little boys a few weeks ago. During that sweet week of plum perfection, they would swing by in the evening after playing tennis to “steal” some fruit. “We are eating $200!” 

We giggled over that, sure. But the value of the fruit and the work of preserving its goodness feels utterly separate from money. The exchange of cash for product feels a ridiculous, reductive way to frame the entire enterprise. Picking, slicing, simmering—this work is an act of hope in an uncertain world. And if Sue Stuart-Smith is correct, in her lovely book  The Well-Gardened Mind, the work has more subtle value, knitting together the world, scripting a narrative in the very architecture of our minds, of usefulness and joy.

And we all know you cannot put a price on Beauty.

“Quick! What’s the difference between exegesis and hermeneutics?”

Last night we welcomed a guest speaker in our Theology, Ecumenism & Pluralism class, the vice president of an international aid organization. He is Dutch and Indonesian, and in a lilting accent, finishing his introduction, he said, “That’s some of what I do. But if you ask my kids, they’ll say I look at email and drink coffee all day. Which is also true.”

Back in the olden days when I worked at a local church, my young son hated for me to leave at bedtime for evening meetings. “But I don’t even know what a meeting is! I just think about grownups sitting around a table and drinking coffee, talk-talk-talking!” Accurate.

A year into this pandemic, I do not miss meetings, but I do miss the table. Zoom gatherings are tiresome, and I would love to have met all my classmates in person. They are the best part of this finishing-the-master’s-degree project so far. Because of plague, there can be no shooting of shit before and after class, no beer, no coffee, no chats on the way to the bus stop or parking lot. Wouldn’t you want to know more about these people?:

  • A Korean nun who sits straight and tall wrapped in a pale blue shawl, her Zoom background a nighttime view of the Vatican. She apologizes for her poor English, yet is thoroughly engaging, thoughtful, and articulate. 
  • A young woman who was raised in a Pentecostal church and is now seeking ordination with the UCC. She has a master’s in philosophy and studied Russian literature as an undergrad, identifies as queer, and can use words like “ontological” and “Hegelian” in casual conversation, absolutely unironically.
  • An older Carmelite, a woman who has a PhD in something or other, and WOW does she have an orderly mind. I overheard her talking with another student during a break, and evidently she keeps track of her notes and our readings in an Excel document. (!!!) So when she occasionally wears her hair in long silver braids with a kerchief, which was a popular look in the 1970s–I find that endearing somehow. As if hard-core brainiacs shouldn’t be allowed to look like our babysitters of yore.

They are all brilliant. I watch and listen, wondering if it might not be time to rename this blog. For accuracy. And to avoid false advertising.

My pal Wayne recently confessed in an email, “I honestly don’t understand why you would want to go back to school and study theology. Quick! What’s the difference between exegesis and hermeneutics?” 

Good question. I just keep thinking of little Jeremiah. One summer when the boys were small, probably not long after my E complained about meetings and talking and coffee, several of us parents were sitting in the sunshine while the children played. Jeremiah had just gotten a fancy watch for his birthday.

“Wanna see my watch?”

Of course we did.

“Nice!”

“Hey, what time is it, buddy?”

He studied his wrist, then looked up, grinned, and cheerfully said, “No idea!” And then he scampered off.

He’s a firefighter now, and presumably knows how to tell time. Perhaps one day I’ll drop “hermeneutics” into casual conversation and keep a straight face while I’m at it. In our last paper, which was all bread and condiment and baloney, I actually wrote “in-breaking of the spirit,” in a bold and fruitless attempt to seem like I knew what I was talking about. I felt dirty. 

Sure, I’ve enjoyed this experiment. But it’s been a lot, all those infinity pages of reading each week. And I’m anxious to write agin, my own stuff, less baloney sandwich.

The violas and pansies and daffodils are blooming, and the plum blossoms will burst open any minute. The forget-me-nots, too. The new arbor and fence are up in the back garden, and it’s still light out at dinnertime. Just one class session left, and one paper, “A Coherent Theology of Unity for 2021”—No idea!—and then I can scamper into the garden. 

I can’t wait.

unprecedented solitude, day 35

My garden was difficult to maintain after I found myself living alone, and then, during the years I was ill, impossible. I am obscenely fortunate during this plaguetime to have hours and hours a day to work outside. And that, it seems, is what is required. Hours and hours a day. Because bringing a garden back is at least as hard if not harder than making one in the first place.

Yesterday I cleared bindweed and shoveled compost into the vegetable beds. Planted some lettuces. The bindweed, though. Hours.

Years ago, my friend Mary’s mother, a botanist, walked through the yard with me, imagining possibilities. She was older, frail, and had a distinctively breathy and musical voice.

“What can I do about this bindweed?” I asked her.

“Well. There’s only one thing you can do,” she giggled.

“Yes?”

“Move.”

But I stayed. And the ubiquitous bindweed is… ubiquitous.

I am a slow worker and my efforts sometimes feel futile. The labor is intense, and I end every day sore and pleasantly spent. But, little-by-slowly, I am making progress.

On the phone with my son yesterday evening, I mentioned that all this time in the garden has made me aware that I was either naïve or willfully ignorant when I planned this space. It is frankly impossible for one person working outside the home to manage this much.

I work steadily for three or four hours a day, and then I spend another hour or two on less demanding labor—cleaning the patio, tidying the tools. So, essentially, this is nearly a full-time job. And, yes, I guess it was naïveté, not so much about the labor but about what is expected of us in this culture, in terms of work that takes us away from home.

Or maybe both, a naiveté and willful rejection of cultural norms.

And a hunger for beauty and life and abundance, too. Let’s not forget that part.

Well. Whatever it was that led me to decide to fill every available space with life, I do not regret it. And, in terms of maintenance, it wasn’t only a matter of time that led to the current state of rack and ruin. I am a nine-month employee, so you would think I could manage. But timing has also been a factor. For the last twenty years I have worked overtime from mid-March to mid-May. Last year I had two days entirely free in April, and they were not consecutive. And while my work days were often short, during my free mornings I was so overwhelmed, I could seldom decide where to even begin.

By the time I limped through the semester to commencement, the weeds had taken over. And, let’s be honest. Waist-high weeds are terrifying.

But there is a secret, too, another reason I have been feckless in my attempts at maintaining this garden, even before the Mortal Peril.

In my twenties and thirties, I used to plan my walks through the neighborhood so I could visit my favorite gardens. All our cracker box houses were built immediately after WWII, and they are not lovely. The cared-for gardens were few and far between—and even those pretty ones from back in the olden days are now gone. Over time, I met and chatted with the women who tended the three or four wildly creative gardens. One day I realized. They were all old. And single.

I was unhappy in my marriage, and while I longed for both freedom and a lovely garden, somehow I made a connection in my mind that was likely unfair and, in retrospect, as damaging to my psyche as it is straight-up humorous. I distinctly remember thinking, “I’ll be damned if I turn into one of these old women who pour all their passion into their garden because they can’t get laid, are incapable of intimate relationship.”

(Side note, and a story for another time, I learned during my six-week dating misadventure, immediately prior to almost croaking, that I could actually get laid any day of the week if I wanted to. So you could you.)

I have told only a few people about this peculiar connection in my mind, and even the telling was not helpful in letting it go, the conflict I felt about having a lovely, well-tended garden.

Who would have thunk it, that it would take a global pandemic for me to hunker down with my solitude, to make room for the idea that a beautiful garden and a fulfilling intimate relationship—these are not mutually exclusive.

In terms of the physical space, my work, as they say, is cut out for me. I will have plenty to occupy my time until I need to rethink my employment plans. And although I have not even begun to address the area in the way-back, the devastation from last year’s side sewer replacement, I do not feel overwhelmed. I simply take one section at a time.

I do not think often about after, about maintaining all this when we return to whatever is left of normal life, post-pandemic. Of course, sure, at a practical level, when my arbor chip dump comes through, I will mulch the areas I’ve reclaimed, and then, yes, perhaps I will be able to maintain the garden after—assuming, of course, I survive and don’t lose the house.

This is a dark possibility I prefer not to think about. But I woke myself with a start the other night, having dreamed I was making my own coffin, so some part of my mind is aware. The gardening engages the mind and body only during daylight hours, when it is critical to participate in the fact that life wants to happen.

In these strange times when our mortality is so close, so present, there is immense pleasure and comfort in a lettuce. Or in the ruby-stemmed chard I brought in from the garden last night for dinner. Or the long tangle of white root mass as I lift the bindweed from the soil. Or the small new buds on my Jude the Obscure rose, planted last week.

Or in the simple fact of springtime.

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Jude the Obscure arrived today.

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