My current lessor bid me adieu after attending to some task at the house I lease by saying, “Thanks for taking care of the property.” The gesture was curious to me as I was merely knocking back the weeds and mowing the grass, for the most part. When I rented my first house in Camarillo California, my bride, our one-year-old daughter and I moved there for my first post as a lending office manager, 60 miles away from our Los Angeles home. Upon visiting the rental, I saw a huge wall of dead roses lining the driveway. I told the landperson that I was not a gardening type; he replied that the care and feeding of the roses would not be expected of me. A closer inspection of the rose bushes found that they all had tags with exotic names. I started a desultory watering program that produced spectacular results: The roses burst into bloom.
My city-bred bride wanted a garden, and some neighbor-friends advised us on the preparation of the ground. One friend was a ranch hand on a horse farm, and I was able to get a sweet deal on manure. The back seat of my 1972 VW Super Beetle, when laid flat, could hold a load of horse hockey. (The “dung Beetle” stank for a month, though.) I spread the manure and dropped seeds into it; the seeds screamed and smoked and died. After further consultation, I mixed the manure with soil, and the garden gave carrots, radishes, beets and tomatoes; in a window box, snap peas climbed the strings. My daughter would come into the garden with us, pull a beet from the ground, knock the dirt off it on her leg, and bite it.
We put in a garden at the house we purchased in Southern Indiana, too, but this time I had an excellent tutor in my next-door neighbor, whose corn stalks overtopped our common fence. Within the properly prepared rows in the back yard we planted carrots, strawberries, tomatoes, squash and cabbage; the peanuts were a gift from the Arkansan neighbor. An inadequate row of corn languished and died. That was my last adventure into gardening; thereafter, I eschewed the soil. I once made a regrettable comment to my gardening friend about “grubbing in the dirt.”
In my current house with my youngest daughter and granddaughter, I realized that I would need a lawnmower and other land-arranging tools. My daughter spent most of last summer ripping out “stinging nettles,” which are back: The gardener’s work is never done. But my granddaughter loves flowers, so I potted vincas and petunias for her. When she wakes, our morning ritual is to water her flowers. I planted oregano and cilantro for me. Myah loves to “dig, dig” in the dirt, and her mother bought her a little pair of gardening gloves to match mine and though there has been no more planting, I give her a trowel to turn over dirt.
Wendell Berry, the poet, activist and educator, spoke of the beauty of turning the earth with one’s hands. I had forgotten that, but my youngest daughter relishes the challenge of whacking weeds and turning dry dirt into a place where flowers can grow. I remember tending the gardens in Camarillo and Clarksville, and eating the fruits of that toil. These days, when I stand above my granddaughter to watch her digging with her small spade and hear her whispering “worms, where are you,” I realize that “taking care of the property” can result when in communion with the earth, and grubbing in the dirt.
cjon3acd@att.net