The Garden

I planted a garden this year.

It doesn't sound terribly important. Millions of people do it every year. But I never had, and sometimes a thing that seems commonplace to one person has great significance to another.

I have to admit to being a bit of a hermit. I don't get out much, and have always been a bookish, indoorsy type. When I was a child, adults were forever insisting that I get outside and spend some time in the sunlight, so I'd put down my book and reluctantly go, staying out only as long as I had to and then hurrying back to pick up where I had left off. Sometimes I'd take all of the old wine bottles out of my grandparents' credenza, grab a flashlight and close myself inside with a book. I'd stay there for hours, making sure to hide the bottles around the living room so it wasn't immediately obvious that I was in there instead of them.

During the warm months my grandparents had a thousand projects outside: ground to be tilled, pine needles and leaves to be raked by the bagful, hills to be leveled and ditches to be filled. I sometimes refer to my grandmother, whom I love very much, as the Gardenazi: her work ethic is strong and merciless, and yard work was anything but fun. I did a lot of raking and weed-pulling, moved a lot of rocks and dirt, but it was up to my grandmother to plant the seeds and arrange the flowers she brought home in their plastic 6-pots. I didn't participate in the lifecycle of the plants, never got attached to the seedlings as they grew. Gardening was a chore, not a joy, and I entered adulthood glad to have left it behind.

Despite my lack of affinity for gardening, I tend to have houseplants by the score. Various places I've lived have been full of them, like jungles. Unfortunately, the place I live now doesn't get much light so I have very few plants, and it makes me sad. I notice their absence. Houses without plants, pets and books seem strangely bleak and empty to me.

Sometime last March I decided that one of my plants needed repotting, so I brought it into the kitchen and broke open a new bag of soil. After I had situated the plant in its new home I poured a little water on it, and the smell of the water hitting the fresh soil rose upward, pungent and loamy. I breathed it in, and had a visceral, almost primal reaction. Winter had been long and cold; the house had been closed up all season against the elements and yearned for a balmy, fragrant breeze. I was suddenly filled with longing: for growth, and nurture, and … for earth. I wanted to put my hands in it, dig my toes into it; the aroma of it was like perfume, or food. I felt almost giddy with anticipation. I squatted there in my kitchen, my hands covered in mud, beaming.

I wanted a garden.

A few weeks later my friend Roma, serene and dreamy-eyed, came to my house with bags of dirt and envelopes full of seeds. She had shovels and spades, rakes and a hose. We worked for a few hours digging and pouring, scattering and covering and watering. At the end of the day I had… dirt. Nice, even beds of dirt, brown and level and wet. I was pleased, and stood with my hands on my hips, surveying my work.

Now there was nothing left to do but wait, and water. I had planted a seed of anticipation within myself as well, and it grew along with the garden. I watered every other day, watching the soil for signs of life. I had forgotten what it felt like to stand in the sun, letting it soak through to my bones.

Then the day came when some small things began to break through the soil. I crouched above them, studying the infinite beauty of their minuscule leaves. Each day there were more, and they got larger. I knew that I had planted them and watered them and that this is what they were supposed to do all along, but it still felt miraculous to me. The sunflower sprouts were enormous, and looked like baby dragons when they first reared their big heads.

As I waited for growth I added beds, and filled them with herbs. I had the ones that I like to cook with, like Basil; some for tea, like Chamomile and Mint, and Echinacea, the Purple Coneflower, for its beauty and my good health. I planted Foxglove for a hint of danger, and Thyme because there's never enough. There was Rosemary for remembrance, Sage with its soft leaves and scent. There was a pumpkin mound, too, out in the middle of the yard.

Summer bloomed and my garden with it; as it did I found something in it, some certain joy and sense of... more than just accomplishment: something akin to love. It used to be that my dusty little yard was just that, no more than a space between the gate and the door. Then, after I planted the seeds, even before they broke the surface of the dirt, it was like I could somehow feel them there... becoming. There was this sense of expectation, and protection. When I came home at night it seemed as though the garden was waiting there for me, and I would find that I had missed it while I was gone. Suddenly this place was somewhere I felt happy, and safe, and alive - really, amazingly alive. The soil was warm beneath my feet, and made me feel like dancing. In the hours before dawn I would stand there, listening to it growing, feeling like I could reach up and touch the stars, that everything was fine and right and just as it should be, and that I was very, very small - and yet entirely significant, growing right where I'd been planted.

An old friend came through town and stopped for lunch. When he dropped me off at home he walked me to the gate, and I asked him in to see the garden. The meeting had been special, one to cherish; we hadn't seen each other in many years. We walked around for a while, and then he had to go. I sent a sprig of Rosemary along with him so that he wouldn't forget - me, or the day, or old times. Later he told me that the walk through the garden had been oddly magical; he didn't know why. Perhaps because it was so meaningful to me, he concluded, and because I had wanted to share that with him.

I've seen life happen in my garden, in a small and fundamental way, and have been struck dumb with reverence for what I've seen. More and more I find that I can't see that much difference between myself, the Morning Glories and the ants. Perhaps, I told him, it's these things that I wanted to share - how I learned that, to the seeds, the covering soil is a womb, though it looks like a grave.

The Garden has provided fertile soil for my growth, taught me in a way that I had forgotten to simply raise up my face and joyfully seek the sun. I scattered seeds - some I knew and lots I didn't - and fell in love with every one I'd planted as it came up, no matter what it turned out to be.

I found, too, that there's great joy just in the watering.