When we first moved to the Caboose on Catherine Lane, the backyard was filled with plantain lily, clover, crab grass and other ugly "weeds" with intense root systems. We roto-tilled it twice, the second time digging sheep manure into the soil and soon, after several more tillings, I could pick up a handful of chocolate birthday cake and let it crumble through my fingers. It was wonderful and smelled liked the beautiful loam of an old garden, even though it wasn't. Old, I mean. It was an ugly lawn turned into "potential". I had brought small pots of this and that from my old garden up String Creek, but I was still in the 'keeping them in the shade' stage and watering them, while I decided what I wanted the garden to look like. Our caboose was at the end of a lane that was easy enough to block off because I had spoken with one of the men on the city planning commission and I had known him for twenty years. He said, "Robin, Catherine Lane is last on the list and the list is long. The City just doesn't have the money to fix the ruts in the road or fill in the potholes for several years, I'm sorry to say." I held my glee inside and said to him, "Oh, it's ok Dave, I just wanted to know where we stood in the scheme of things. I'll manage alright." And he actually thanked me for being understanding, little knowing I took his words for permission to go right ahead and make my wishes come as true as I could make them on my small pension.
I began by collecting stones and rocks and drawing out on graph paper some ideas. I had never done a garden this way. Always before I was so organic I didn't know where I was gonna put one stone after the other. I just carried stones to an area, dropped them in a pile and began laying them out. But this time, I knew I had to have a plan, because the garden area was so small. By the end of the afternoon and heading straight into twilight, I had made six beds measured out three on each side, north and south and in the middle, I placed a stone bird bath that i poured seed into. I had a fountain that I placed over by the windows that opened into our bedroom and after filling it with water and turning the pump on, water came spurting out of a stone pine cone which sat on top of the wide saucer (yes, very Grecian) and three wonderfully naked ladies, the Graces of course, danced around and around holding up the saucer with their arms. I had found the bird seed holder at a thrift store and the water fountain at a garden hardware store and its price had been knocked down to a third because someone had broken one of the Grace's feet. I decided since I was lame, my Grace could be lame just as well, and bought it.
My brother began a tradition of sending me a gift certificate for a hundred dollars to a local nursery to help me actualize my dreams and when I was at someone's house for a garden party, I always sat next to a bed of something growing, and as we talked, I would absent-minded weed that bed. After a while, the host of the party would notice what I was doing, and I would apologize. It's just that I'm shy and parties are hard on me and I like to keep my hands busy. They always joke about they feel they should pay me and I always reply, "Can I have a piece of whatever it is I've just been weeding?" and they always say yes in gratitude and thus, the garden grows. I cannot believe it's been ten years that I've lived in the caboose, come down off the mountain and made my home again, anew, it seems I am always starting over again and again. Twice I have been in two different places for fifteen years. I was shocked both times that I had to move. I could move out of this dear little caboose, but it would have to be into something a bit bigger and definitely have garden space. One birthday years ago I bought a quarter flat of corsican mint and it has finally after planting many thumb sized plugs of the sweet-smelling stuff, taken over most of the dirt in between the garden plots which ended up being made of brick one birthday. I buy a dwarf fruit tree every year and the bartlett pear actually has pears on it this year. The strawberries are massive and I cut their stringers and plant the new little plants in other places, so that I now have several borders of the fruit. My fox glove are seven, eight feet tall and the other day I saw a fat ol' furry bumbley bumble bee inside a 'glove'. I put my ear up to the glove and I could hear him buzzing away. Gardens make me happy.
This is the first year that I haven't been able to pull every single weed out of it for a fresh look. That hurts me more than the lame part does, but I simply can't do it. I weed fifteen minutes, rest, do another small amount, until I have done about an hours worth of work and then I have to go lie down. It's so disappointing. I couldn't afford seed or starts this year and I panicked. The Gleaners, a town group who collects food at the end of the season has now started selling plants. I don't know what for, the money, but I went over to their sale after church and just straight out said I have no money this year and if I don't put some vegetables in, we won't have anything to put by for winter and they said, take whatever you want and someone will drive you home. I was so happy. I hadn't expected a free lunch. I had expected a trade at the least. So I got a great deal of tomatoes, summer squash, some white currants (I grow red currants, so this will be interesting), dill, cilantro, I am not remembering what else right now, but it was a windfall. People around the world call America the richest country in the world and I just don't see it that way lately. It's a little frightening.But things are looking up and last month I was given three ever-bearing raspberries that I'm pretty sure I wrote about, and they are thriving. Also my snow peas are climbing their way up to the end of their ladder and I'm going to have to add more climbing stuff. I want to get some eggplants, because then I will be able to make ratatouille and freeze it for the cold snowy nights.The cherry trees in my neighbor yard are groaning and sagging with cherries and me and the man next door intend on fighting off the blue jays this year and getting some to jam and jelly up. Oh yes, and PIE!
Roses are going crazy all over town. And so are the foxgloves. Everything is big big big. And I know why. It's still raining. I don't know if it's because of that hole in the sky, global warming, none of it makes any sense to me, but if this is the end ecologically, it's sure puttin' on a mighty spectacular show in the natural world in our neck of the woods.
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