Cultivating our Garden
4/1/06
A glorious, post rain day, with moist, black clay steaming as the sun hit. A poor, dead tree required removal and a requiem, so I armed the kids with 2 saws and a keen eye and watched them bring her down. Of course, no task is complete without turning it into a story, so they took on the roles of Claus & Sunny Baudelaire, of the Limony Snicket series, with me as the older sister Violet. We complained in our faux British accents about the terrible chores we had to do for the wicked Count Olaf while whacking and sawing away at the dead wood. I love their imaginations and enjoyed being in their world of lost orphans, with no hope for the future. Hanah collected dead twigs to make both a bird's nest and popsicles with and Noah relished feeling fierce in felling the major limbs of the tree. He and I plowed under the stump with our shovels and cried out triumphantly as we unearthed the root ball. "That was fun, Mom. Can we do it again, tommorow?" This from a kid who dreams of nothing more than getting, finally, an X-box and has made it very clear that he would prefer boarding school to this "ugly old house" anyday.
Gardening mission accomplished, we then take our weekly walk to the video store rating everyone's gardens. Now, ours has returned to "worst" status in Noah's eyes, because it's so "raw" (read xeriscaped) and the kids argue the entire 4 block route. I sigh, take a deep breath of teh grassy air and note the late afternoon sun as it dances across the sidewalk. The quixotic moods of a 9 year old are no match, however, for the exuberance of 7 year old Superlative Girl. She seems to know no place but humor, joy, curiosity and the love of living. Had I plucked her from a cabbage patch at birth, she would have been covered in the richest fertilizer. She shines.
Noah's learned the earthworm "dance" that squirming, flip-flop move one does on the ground that propels one forward in an undulating motion. He demonstrates on every green patch of grass as we go. So limber, so silly; I laugh the whole way. Hanah gives this new move a try and looks more like a beached trout, but finally gets it down. We inch our way towards our destination.
On teh way back, we stop to admire a wonderful succulent garden being tended to by teh owner. It's so densely packed with cacti and bamboo, lambs ear, jade and other desert loving plants that the sun can't reach through. The kids meet his 2 dogs, he and I talk about how theraputic weeding is, and I am reminded, again of Candide's mandate that "we must all cultivate our gardens." Getting our hands into the loam of life, making something grow, smelling, feeling, even harvesting our plants for consumption; there seems nothing more elementally important than this. I think of Victory Gardens and Alice Waters and her school vegetable garden projects and the absolute miracle of life sprouting from pin point size seeds, turning into huge pumpkins or peonies or teh California Poppy. We finally introduce ourselves and Robert gives us some cuttings to take with us. With thanks we head home as the sun sets and suddenly Noah wants to plant these new friends and make our house the best looking on the block. He decides where to put them so everyone can see them, and proudly plants his. This only an hour after having complained about ours being the ugliest front yard in the neighborhood.
Transformation. He got to remove the deadwood and plant anew; and is now invested in our tiny plot of earth. From window boxes in blighted inner city neighorhoods, to Hollywood mansions and Iowa housing developments, we need to feel some connecting to the earth and the rhythms of nature. My kids, in their earthworm dance, plow their way through life, learning to weed, to prune, to fertilize, to cultivate the gardens of their world. I am blessed to witness this cycle of fertility.
A glorious, post rain day, with moist, black clay steaming as the sun hit. A poor, dead tree required removal and a requiem, so I armed the kids with 2 saws and a keen eye and watched them bring her down. Of course, no task is complete without turning it into a story, so they took on the roles of Claus & Sunny Baudelaire, of the Limony Snicket series, with me as the older sister Violet. We complained in our faux British accents about the terrible chores we had to do for the wicked Count Olaf while whacking and sawing away at the dead wood. I love their imaginations and enjoyed being in their world of lost orphans, with no hope for the future. Hanah collected dead twigs to make both a bird's nest and popsicles with and Noah relished feeling fierce in felling the major limbs of the tree. He and I plowed under the stump with our shovels and cried out triumphantly as we unearthed the root ball. "That was fun, Mom. Can we do it again, tommorow?" This from a kid who dreams of nothing more than getting, finally, an X-box and has made it very clear that he would prefer boarding school to this "ugly old house" anyday.
Gardening mission accomplished, we then take our weekly walk to the video store rating everyone's gardens. Now, ours has returned to "worst" status in Noah's eyes, because it's so "raw" (read xeriscaped) and the kids argue the entire 4 block route. I sigh, take a deep breath of teh grassy air and note the late afternoon sun as it dances across the sidewalk. The quixotic moods of a 9 year old are no match, however, for the exuberance of 7 year old Superlative Girl. She seems to know no place but humor, joy, curiosity and the love of living. Had I plucked her from a cabbage patch at birth, she would have been covered in the richest fertilizer. She shines.
Noah's learned the earthworm "dance" that squirming, flip-flop move one does on the ground that propels one forward in an undulating motion. He demonstrates on every green patch of grass as we go. So limber, so silly; I laugh the whole way. Hanah gives this new move a try and looks more like a beached trout, but finally gets it down. We inch our way towards our destination.
On teh way back, we stop to admire a wonderful succulent garden being tended to by teh owner. It's so densely packed with cacti and bamboo, lambs ear, jade and other desert loving plants that the sun can't reach through. The kids meet his 2 dogs, he and I talk about how theraputic weeding is, and I am reminded, again of Candide's mandate that "we must all cultivate our gardens." Getting our hands into the loam of life, making something grow, smelling, feeling, even harvesting our plants for consumption; there seems nothing more elementally important than this. I think of Victory Gardens and Alice Waters and her school vegetable garden projects and the absolute miracle of life sprouting from pin point size seeds, turning into huge pumpkins or peonies or teh California Poppy. We finally introduce ourselves and Robert gives us some cuttings to take with us. With thanks we head home as the sun sets and suddenly Noah wants to plant these new friends and make our house the best looking on the block. He decides where to put them so everyone can see them, and proudly plants his. This only an hour after having complained about ours being the ugliest front yard in the neighborhood.
Transformation. He got to remove the deadwood and plant anew; and is now invested in our tiny plot of earth. From window boxes in blighted inner city neighorhoods, to Hollywood mansions and Iowa housing developments, we need to feel some connecting to the earth and the rhythms of nature. My kids, in their earthworm dance, plow their way through life, learning to weed, to prune, to fertilize, to cultivate the gardens of their world. I am blessed to witness this cycle of fertility.
posted by Barbery at 5:49 PM
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