Non-gardeners often ask, “What do you do in the garden all day?”
Everything.
Okay, maybe not everything, but there was that one time when Joe was helping me weed and we…well, never mind.
Eat: I’m having a turkey sandwich among the Joe Pye Weed, which, when I finish, I will pinch back.
Mourn: I see the faces of my three siblings and father, and I talk to them. I would trade this garden to have seen them grow old. I try and imagine what they would look like now.
Think: I look for new ways to improve the design: I moved my Baptisia many times before I realized it looked better back in its original place. This was not what I would call a design success but provided some design fun in the open air.
I travel. I visit my grandmother’s garden and root cellar and try to recall the name of the butcher at the Red and White grocery store in St. Peter, MN. (It was Amel, my mother, who remembers everything, confirms this). I try to re-trace my steps to the last place I left my keys, and conjure the face of the face of the woman who was lying to me about… And try to fill in a lost stanza from Leonard Cohen’s “Marianne.”
Sing: I pick a bouquet of Lily of the valley for a friend and dredge up this song from my Camp Fire Girl days:
White coral bells
Upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley
Deck my garden walk
Oh, don't you wish
That you could
hear them ring.
That will happen only
when the fairies sing.
Talk myself off ledges: “You don’t have any control over it; let it go. Enjoy this moment; oh, enough from you.” You know how it goes? Or as Leonard Cohen would say, Everybody knows, everybody knows…That's how it goes.”
I finish unfinished sentences. Write wrongs.
Rest: Okay, maybe I pass out from fatigue, but it can be the best nap ever. Only if you remember to use bug spray.
Read: I finished Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of This Book in the shade of the ancient lilac bush. Reading in the garden is one of life’s sublime pleasures.
I watch the wrens dart in and out of their house and catbirds in the birdbath.
Far from the house, I have a secluded outdoor bathroom – it’s called a bush.
Laugh: I make up bad jokes. Here’s one: What do country folks call hollyhocks? Answer: Hollyhicks.
You know where to find me. All day.