Reclaiming the Garden: Part One

A few weeks ago, one of my work-study students and I were in the sound booth together waiting for an event to begin.  She is a religion major, taking a cheerful assortment of classes — jihad, holocaust, and, good gravy!, economics.  In a quiet moment, a pause, she turned to me and asked, "You were a religion major, Nicole.  What did you do after college and before you got this job, managing the concert hall?"

Awkward.  The trajectory of my education and "career" reads like a not-very-interesting tragicomedy cautionary tale.  With an emphasis on the comic. I gave her the CliffsNotes version — sold lingerie at Sears for a summer, worked for the symphony in the business office for a year, went to seminary, got pregnant, got married, went back to seminary, left the church, back to arts management.  Ta-da!

I might not have covered even that much territory in my little synopsis.  I can't remember.  I do remember wondering what part of the story would be relevant to her, and I remember resisting (admirably, if I may say so) the urge to try to dissuade her from racking up debt for a religion degree.

Somehow her question got me to thinking about leaving the church.  I never think about it, usually, that church and theology chapter of my life.  Occasionally one of my virtual friends will post something on Facebook about Christian ethics, and the language, the grammar and vocabulary, ring in my mind like a melody I once knew but had forgotten, the lyrics, the meaning, gone.  Those moments are pleasant, remind me of a world I might have entered, but where, ultimately, I couldn't really settle or find a place or feel at home.  I like knowing that world is intact and still humming along with good people asking big questions.  Other times, very rarely, in my less gracious moments, I take a peek at a blog written by a somewhat popular theologian, and her eloquent bullshittitudes repulse me, and I feel a wave of relief that I didn't go down that nasty path to a world where intellectual masturbation disguises and embellishes the batshit-crazy.

At any rate, typically, no, don't think about that period of my life.  But the next morning, after that concert, I sat gazing out the front window at the garden, which is a mess.  I was pondering how people and places disappear from our lives and memories, events lose meaning.  I had worked at a downtown United Methodist church for several years, back in the late 90s, and the key to that now-demolished building still hangs next to my front door.  It's a funky looking key; the boys liked to play with it when they were little.  Another forgotten relic of that time.  And here this garden remains.  Forgotten, too, this past summer, but still here, still a part of my life, waiting for me to freaking pay attention.

Last summer while the rest of the nation broiled in record-breaking heat, we here in the Pacific Northwest enjoyed unusually lovely weather, and had an almost-record-breaking streak of dry weather.  I didn't do a single thing out there.  The previous fall there had been two wasp nests out front, and I'd been stung, twice.  Recovering from the side effects of the medication after the allergic reaction pretty much took me out of commission for the fall, and I never got around to the usual garden chores then, either.  So it was especially bad this year.  Weedy and dessicated and neglected, I looked out that morning and realized it was time to, at the very least, clear a path so that the little ghouls could get to the front door unscathed on Halloween.  

So I got out there and cleared the damn path.  Three hours later, it was still a mess, but I had two enormous yard waste toter bins filled, and apples picked and simmering on the stove for apple butter.  While I worked I thought about how I used to like to look at gardening magazines.  I stopped, because the articles made me feel resentful.  In my memory, most of the articles featured new gardens made by fresh young couples with resources I didn't have.  The older, established gardens didn't seem to be infested with mistakes, like my garden.  (People: just say no to Bishop's Weed.  Trust me.  And Campanula?  Oh, gods.  I tried everything short of chemical warfare: digging, smothering, nothing works.  That stuff comes back and spreads and chokes out everything in its path.)  Sometimes I look out at the garden and see abundance and life.  Other times, a litany of bad decisions.

Twenty years ago, when I moved into this house, a fixer, a starter, I was very young, and the idea of ever moving horrified me, so great was my need for home. Whenever the conversation turned to moving to a bigger space, I would get nervous and joke that you'd only get me out of this place on a stretcher.  When we decided to add a room, I was relieved.

"Why can't we go to playgroup, Mommy!"
"Because we're waiting for the inspector."
"Why?"
"Because we need an inspection."
"Why?"
"Because we need a permit."
"Why?"
"Because we want a bigger house."
"Why?"
"So we can have a baby."
"Oh!"

Even with the addition, the house was too small for the barrage of kid-related paraphernelia.  So I focused on the garden, where I felt less claustrophobic.  And although the story of that garden might aptly be called Urban Permaculture Misakes I Made, little by slowly, very slowly, something wonderful evolved. 

Now, all these years later, after Not My Favorite Summer, I am disinterested, ready for a change, something new.  (Let someone else deal with the effing Bishop's Weed!  Fresh slate, baby, that's what I need!)  One day last month a friend stopped by to drop off a book, and as she stood on the front stoop, she glanced around and said very gently, "I was a little worried about you when I saw the garden.  I thought you might be depressed.  I mean, I can tell you haven't been out here much."  Depressed.  Perhaps.  That thought had occured to me.  Riding my bike home from work last summer I would look at my neighbors' yards and they seemed so bleak and awful.  I used to look at those same spaces and see potential, see the possibility for beauty and life.  Sure, I saw more little vegetable plots this past year, and yes, seed companies don't seem to be suffering the same losses as we see in other markets, but the economy is still slow.  So maybe mine wasn't the only neglected garden.  Maybe.  What I do know is that I was focused on other things, other priorities, mainly polishing up the old resume and looking (and looking and looking) for any job opening I could pass myself off as qualified to fill.

And that, too, perhaps, had brought the church chapter a little farther forward in my thoughts.  Seeing my life on a page, deciding how to narrate my education and work experiences — shoot, that is an exercise that is, if not humiliating, at least humbling.  And also heartening: I don't look so bad on paper as I'd imagined I might.  The church chapter is a tidy entry on the resume.  At the time, of course, it was not tidy.  Being a part of the church, or trying to be, was hard.  Leaving was easy.  I didn't know where I wanted to go except away, away from there.  I was not especially bitter; I was simply done with that experiment.  Now?  Now the garden is a mess, and I while I feel done, so very done with this experiment, I am still beholden to this space, owe my time and attention to this landscape.

So I cleared the path.  I made a start.

* * *

UPDATE, November 10

I used to catch people looking at the garden — or stealing plums or apples or roses — pretty regularly.  (Side note: before folks take something from the garden, as if it's scripted, they look over both shoulders to see if anyone is watching, but never at the house where the owner can totally see them.)  Cars sometimes would slow down, stop and then back up to get a better view.  Once a man planted himself on the bench in our parking strip and had an animated conversation on his cell phone for almost an hour.  It's been a while since I've noticed anyone noticing or enjoying, but this morning a fella out walking his dog stopped in front of my house.  Sipping his coffee and holding his bag of poo rather daintily, he looked about the garden for a long while, then wandered off.  Seems like a good sign.