Tag Archives: gardening
Nearly enough
I like the sound of my phone not ringing, the stillness of my door unknocked. I like the invitations I do not receive, the peaceful hollow of my empty mailbox. Unsolicited for any response, I offer none. Now, I have nearly enough time. The hummingbird feeder needs sugar water; the nuthatches, more seed. If not […]
Aspiration, or, ode to a pea
For Mary, who considers even the weeds I may yet be good enough to rebirth as a pea, emerging from soil like a curled biceps, muscular and confident, climbing the fence of possibility, unfurling blossoms pink and delicate as a baby’s lips. And maybe before it’s done I will yield some small harvest, but if […]
Sprinkling the dead
Having been watered, they might grow. Rupture the soft lie of silk and mahogany, the sullen concrete casings, and emerge in the bardo of possibility, small imperfect seeds feeling again the tug of the sun.
Mutiny of the bounty
I’m feeling in need of what might be called a harvest nap, having returned yesterday from my gardener friend Ann’s home with several hundred ripe and rosy peaches. The yield of one ambitious tree, the fruit has already deranged Ann’s exceptional sense of order. When I arrived to help pick stragglers and take home surplus, […]
Yard
I love each plant too much, but not blindly. I’m aware of their redemptive force, how they came to be here partly from my need for correction of some mysterious but fatal error I made in ancient time, before memory — not just the discrete failure to care for those two grand old trees, but some bigger and unforgivable mistake. For years, I have dreamed sporadically that I have murdered some unknown person and been found out, that I have irreparably taken another’s life and ruined my own.
Gromance
Spring is in the air, which means the ash and cherry trees in my back yard are about to renew their perennial gromance. Their affection arose nearly seven years ago, when I planted the van semi-dwarf cherry – a modest-sized tree, $30 at Walmart — a scant five feet from the ash, a slender but […]
Getting my goat
The ancient doorknob on my outside basement door failed the other day, just as I was settling into my evening routine of watching brain-numbing television while my cats — who are expert in gestures that seem to express affection but actually cause scars, sort of like a psychotic ex — knead my lap with their […]
High
As the few garden crops I’ve cultivated — tomatoes and kale and spinach — spend themselves and begin to bolt, I’ve been meandering around my yard investigating what Mother Nature planted without any input from me. There’s something different every year, and always a bit of delight: Having not been in on the sowing, I […]
Yield
The two cherry tomato plants that have been growing in deck containers all summer are escaping their cages, the spicy boughs groaning under their own weight. The ripening fruit, appearing now in gregarious clusters, is the putative point of planting, fertilizing and watering. Still, the harvest always feels a little sad to me — […]
Purty
I was walking around my yard the other day like a big coarse human, admiring the Beautiful Splashy Things which I had, through intent or dumb luck, played a role in creating. Like this: Chicken! Purty. And this: Flowers! Purty. After a few minutes of this sort of thing, I meandered absent-mindedly over to my small homemade pond to pull a […]
Meditatio Ephemera 