The gardener muses on surrender and banishing fear in the new year.
“You’ve been at this 10 years.”
I didn’t hear Rita come through the gate. She is on the deck at the foot of the path, one hand gripping the trellis covered with Carolina jasmine. Ever since she fell in her garden, she’s very reluctant to negotiate the irregular pathways of mine.
“Ten? More like 20. I’m optimistic. I’m getting it under control. How was the movie?”
“I decided not to go. I didn’t think it was worth two hours of drizzle and apocalyptic despair just to see Viggo Mortensen’s butt. Must be getting old. 20?”
“More like 17.”
“Still . . .”
I crawl a bit further on my knees and jab my hori-hori into the ground to uproot an oxalis, fetching up a fat night crawler with it. “I have more worms,” I say. “Another reason for optimism.’
“Are you collecting them?”
“Worms?”
“Reasons for optimism.”
“I am. There’s so much around telling us to be afraid. I want to change my focus. What you focus on determines your quality of life.”
“When did you get enlightened?” she asks.
“I won’t focus on sarcasm.” There is a pause in which I hear the piping of an unseen hummingbird. “I read the book.”
“Oh, you mean ‘The Dead.’”
“The Road. ‘The Dead’ is Joyce.”
“Oh, right. What did you think?”
“Gloom and gloomier and then it got really dark. It made me want to crawl in bed and turn on the electric blanket.”
She points her cane at me. “Electric blankets aren’t good for you, not to mention the carbon footprint.”
“Yeah, right. What do you use, Viggo Mortensen’s butt?”
“I heard he’s really skinny in the movie. Oh well. Seriously, they aren’t. They mess up your chi. And I wasn’t being sarcastic. I watch the news and I fulminate. Everybody fulminates; it’s a full-time occupation for the despairing. That and punditry. I’m going to fulminate.”
“What the heck. How’s the back?”
“Better. I think they got it right this time. Include that in your collection.”
She has six screws in her lumbar region. I’m too queasy to discover exactly what they’re doing.
“Do you want some hot cider?” I ask. “It’s freezing.”
“I’ve been running the heater like crazy. I know, I’m a hypocrite. No, no. I don’t want to take you from your work. I don’t know why you bother. I think they’re pretty.”
“Yes, you’ve said that.”
“Have I? I seem to have nothing new to say. I’m not sure what to make of it. I suppose I’m a bore. I hope it’s a phase.”
“You’re not a bore. You couldn’t be if you tried.”
She puts her cane under her arm and walks the length of the deck. Like her smile, her gait has a hitch that wasn’t there before. Catching the morning light, the simple, silver descent of her hair appears elegant in a way the auburn flounce never was, but still it’s disconcerting. Having an older close friend is like having a plow to open the road ahead but sometimes the road veers into places you don’t necessarily want on your itinerary.
Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash.
—from The Road, Cormac McCarthy
It’s oxalis season again, end of the world be damned. Readier than rain, it infects the garden with its insane optimism that it can rule the world. Case in point: Last fall I put in a gravel pathway, lining it with landscape fabric (adieu principle: I hate the stuff) in order to suppress it, and guess what, it barged right through and taunted me. People say if you keep on top of weeding you can get it to a manageable place in three years. It’s taken me 17, but finally, except for the walkway and the succulent bed, I’m in charge. The hordes waving yellow pennants have dispersed into isolated outposts, hiding in plain sight. I no longer demonize them. In fact, I almost enjoy our little game, the plucky insurgent rousted by the dedicated gardener.
Another item for the optimism collection: Even after 17 years, I can be surprised by the garden. I thought my clay was irredeemable, that the amending I was doing was insufficient to its intractability and I was right, it was and will be insufficient, but the garden seems to have given me points for effort, and the worms have shown up, more plentiful than ever. Intestines of the soil, according to Aristotle. Why does that sound beautiful?
A listener to a recent “Talk of the Nation,” responding to the topic, Our Fascination with the End of the World, wrote in: “. . . we are all the center of the universe, when we end, the world ends, and here’s how it ends, according to me: I’m 87 years old, tucked up in bed, luxuriating in the feathers, sipping a glass of Veuve Clicquot when my jealous lover bursts into the room and shoots me. Finis.”
That nails it. The world dies when I die. I’m kneeling here decapitating oxalis, and it’s not such a leap then to say that this big spangly world exists because of me, is it? It’s amazing how little gratitude I get. Given my eminence, I wonder if there isn’t something more majestic upon which to spend my energies. What? Isn’t tending one’s garden what Voltaire prescribed? But I doubt it will lead to being shot by a jealous lover. What’s Veuve Clicquot? Champagne? Okay, but my preference would be luxuriating in a warm bath with a deliriously satisfied lover and getting struck by lightning.
But diligence ferments into annoyance, same as it ever was. In the succulent bed, the sprouts wedged in the crannies of agaves and aloes and echeverias are impossible to get without mangling the pudgy leaves. I give up before I am half finished. I have known for years that there is nothing to be done but an upheaval of the site, removing and replacing the soil, followed by a meticulous inspection to assure the succulents are oxalis-free before replanting, if that’s even possible. No matter what, there will be stowaways, colonizers.
It is also true of the gravel walkway, that an overhaul is the only option, but given that apocalypse is imminent, wouldn’t that be a lot of work for nothing?
A warm bath sounds heavenly, but what about the carbon footprint?
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
—from “The Dead,” James Joyce
For the first time ever, this past fall and winter I planted no new plants. Not one irresistible fern, no replacement rhamnus (one of a triad croaked, why why why?) nary a primrose or cyclamen or ridiculous pansy. I made one trip to the nursery, returning empty-handed except for some bags of compost. There are ready interpretations. I have become jaded, indifferent, and/or lazy. I can no longer justify the expense and the amount of plastic involved (see, for example, the overkill of labeling on plants from Proven Winners). I have nothing new to say.
Last week I made one of my periodic visits to Marcia Donahue’s garden in Berkeley, and was gobsmacked once more into euphoric admiration, in the presence of inspiration, invention, plant smarts, and fancy chickens. Comparing my garden to Marcia’s, I wonder if I’m sinking into a slow heaving vat of slag. My garden is devoid of interest. I was going to add “and beauty” but that’s clearly not true; beauty is here and potent, whether I’m focusing on it or upon dissatisfaction. It hardly depends on me at all, which is a relief. Witness the hummingbird. Even the oxalis. (Maybe not that.) I’m fairly certain the world won’t perish when I do. Likewise, if we do ourselves in, along with much of the good earth, nature in her resilience will dust her hands and come up with something less faulty, equally inventive. My garden confirms this.
Another for the collection.
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.
—from “The Dead”
A white hydrangea has occupied the slope beneath the Norway maple since the day of Aunt Dot’s funeral. Someone, I can’t remember who, brought it in her honor. I don’t think it’s a plant she would have particularly liked. I don’t, not that I have anything against hydrangeas if your garden has a wet spot. It’s this particular plant, which seems to be either too sprawling or too pruned. Its white flowers are greenish without being white or green. The leaves (my fault) are often chlorotic. Other plants were brought and planted that day but this one, despite or maybe because of its resolute joylessness, has assumed the status of memorial plant, the pallbearer.
Those blessed enough to tend a garden over time find that it becomes, in addition to everything else, a graveyard. I put Dad’s ashes under the redwood. I think of Maisie, Alice’s cat, every time I walk by Alice’s bougainvillea. In Marcia’s garden a pathway incorporates a headstone. Stepping upon it does not seem disrespectful but rather an acknowledgment, a tribute to who and what has preceded us on the road, which, mirabile dictu, has led to this place, an enchanted garden.
Today, after oxalis burnout, I dug up the hydrangea. It came out remarkably without fuss, in three discrete sections. I felt some guilt. Naturally, there is a gap, conspicuous as a missing tooth. I thought about potting at least one section up—it probably would have survived but wasn’t the point to get rid of it? I tossed all three into the green bin with a kind of wicked thrill.
Then, more wickedness, I ran a warm bath. No Veuve Clicquot in the wine cellar but there was leftover pinot grigio. No lover, jealous or other, to soak with, but then, no gunfire either. Sinking into the warmth, I dreamed of the fetching ferns I saw last visit to the nursery, how they would not only fill the gap but also would bestow on that area a kind of eminence befitting my own status, lord of the garden, the last Faro.
——————————————
Dispatches from Faro’s garden have appeared seasonally in The Monthly for more than a decade and were recently published as a collection by Ithuriel’s Spear Press. The book, entitled In Faro’s Garden, A Tour and Some Detours, is available at www.spdbooks.org, Amazon.com. Faro’ can be reached at farospace@sbcglobal.net. Visit www.infarosgarden.com.
