Their claws were inches from my ankles. Claws and eyes, two things my grandmother’s garden had. Her cats napped under the dense canopy of the asparagus that flanked the entrance to her garden. They’d swipe at my ankles whenever I followed her to pick beans or whatever needed attention. But the chance to be with her, in that acre where she dwelled, lush with possibilities, the promise of that, was more powerful than those feared sentries.
When you invite a child into the garden it’s like the first time they go to church – they see things that we don’t. And they aren’t afraid to question what they see. Like the time a friend took his three-year-old son to his first sermon. He chattered nonstop. After shshshshing him several times with no luck, my friend tried a new approach: he pulled his son close and whispered, “Simon, do you know why we come to church on Sunday morning?” Simon surveyed the congregation and answered: “So people can sleep?”
Or the time my friend Linda pulled a ripe radish from the ground and turned it round and round for her young granddaughter to see. Studying its shape, the rosy clef, the white bottom, she had one question: “Grandma, do radishes have butts?”
Giving. Gardens have a way of doing that.
Or when my friend Bob, who gardened in St. Cloud, Minnesota, invited two young neighbor children into his garden.
He recounted this afternoon scene:
“Chad and Amy and I were gathered, on our knees, around a gopher hole, at the grassy edge of my garden. I was telling them, in considerable detail, about the underground dwellings of gophers. In folding back the encircling grasses, I espied a tiny, tiny flower with a tiny, tiny purple bloom. The first of its sort I had ever seen. I enlarged my explanation of the wonders of nature; barely visible flowers all around us.
“Later, we heard the voice of the tots’ mother, summoning them home. The tots dashed off in her direction, Chad ahead of Amy. In mid-dash, Amy stopped, as if arrested, bent down, plucked something at ground level, then wheeled and dashed back to me.
“One little fist loosely closed, her arm extended toward me, she said:
‘Gdalk mprn qsrt bkadg?’
“Chad not there to translate for me, I had to decide for myself what she said. In my judgment, she had said:
‘I hold in my hand a precious gift,’ so I responded by saying, ‘Yes?’
“Unclosing her fist, she added these words:
‘Kl whmpt bgl rmu.’
“That meant, I was sure, ‘It is for you.’ ”
Gratitude. Gardens create that too.
My granddaughters, on every visit, wanted to walk through my garden and pick flowers. But before they were allowed to pick any flower they had to learn its name. I’d say the name, they’d repeat it, cut the flower and add it to their bouquets. Naturally there were bees on the flowers, so naturally we talked about the work bees do. Further down, they noticed worms. Being so close to the ground is a big advantage for kids, so we talked about the important work of worms.
That year, before Thanksgiving break, all the students in my granddaughter’s kindergarten class had to stand up and say what they were thankful for. “My new bike,” one child said. “A trip to Disney World,” another said. My granddaughter rose and said one word: “Worms.”
“What was the that?” the teacher asked.
“I’m thankful for worms,” Emma repeated.
“Never in my 23 years of teaching,” the teacher told Emma’s mother, “have I heard that answer.”