Favorite Things: Garden Inspection

Lately I've been feeling the full force of my mother's influence on me as a child, or at least how the things she spent time showing us and teaching us have somehow managed to become very much part of who I am as an adult; things I remembered but never saw as being integral to my life.  In following the direction I always intended to, writing fictional books, I am being drawn closer and closer to the kind of person my mother tried to raise.  I had to run wide of everything she stood for in order to find my way back.

I am doing research for Cricket and Grey in earnest now.  In order to write a story that speculates on the future you have to be clear about the present and the past.  To ask what people might do or how they might live when oil runs out means I have to look more closely at how people lived before they had it to rely on and at the same time I have to explore the alternatives that people will be reaching for because obviously humans who are used to the convenience and luxury of the industrial world aren't going to let go of it lightly. 

My drive to the woods a couple weekends ago had me looking at roadside weeds only to discover on research that I had found an important source of food to the Native Americans.  In a weed.  I have checked out books in the library about plants of the Pacific Northwest mountains and coastal regions.  I have checked out historical accounts of pioneers who moved here in the 1850's. 

What does all this have to do with inspecting my garden? 


Ever since having my first garden in Santa Rosa I discovered that one of the most enjoyable parts of every day was making an inspection of it.  I would pour myself a cup of coffee and stroll through my small yard looking at everything with an eye for the macro detail.  This was before I had a digital camera to bring along with me to record and extend the enjoyment with.  It was just me noticing what insects were abundant and checking to see if the ladybugs were finally eating the aphids which were crowding my rose stems.  I would see what I needed to do but  that's not really why I took a daily walk in my yard looking under every leaf and touching blossoms and bark and smelling herbs and listening to the nearly silent butterflies pushing past me to get to pollen.

You can't hear things like that unless your mind is very quiet.


Noticing every detail in my little microcosm connected me to my garden on a level that my mother might have told me was "becoming one with the universe" which expression I have always loathed, yet I came to understand what she was telling me.  Forget about trying to name it God or anything at all, she was saying, it's all right here underneath your nose, crunching under your feet; everything you need to know is laid out around you.  Tread quietly, listen well, empty your head of anything but the details that aren't yourself.  See beyond self and you'll be there just the same.   


Writers have to be able to relate these minute details to others because even though most people don't float around saying things like "Even though I couldn't see the fox in the orchard the hairs on my arms raised as something in my body caught wind of its sharp animal odor and even as my feet hit the moss-sponged ground quietly I knew he was listening to me too..."  we really do all hear and see and feel more than we go around expressing.  We don't focus on the macro view during our everyday life and yet we take it all in, the imprint is in us and most of the time we don't even know it until we read some passage in a book that makes our breath stop with excitement because here is exactly the gorgeous scene you remember from your childhood or here are the sounds you heard while hunting but never realized you heard!  


The stress of my life being so acute and continuing to rise and ebb violently from day to day makes it difficult for me to listen to the world around me attentively.  Writing Cricket and Grey is grounding me and making me listen again.  I was reading about mountain plants and saw the entries for arnica and remembered that I hadn't checked on my arnica plants for a few weeks. 

So yesterday I did a garden inspection to see what was blooming and crawling and growing and dying.  As is always the case, my heart slowed to a more comfortable pace, my breathing became more regular, my attention was riveted on the most minute details of texture, color, movement, sound; I found my yard teaming with a lot more than just my famously six foot tall stands of weeds.  A mess it is, for sure, but my roses are a tangle of delicate blooms and seeing them reminded me of good things.  Of the good life.  Of the reason why we're trying so hard not to let go of this house.  We need a sanctuary and we never found it living in rentals.  


We may lose this house anyway and surely it would be a lot less painful if we just let what feels inevitable happen without fighting so hard against it...but the garden is mine and I don't want to let it go to others when I'm starting to see the quince produce more than one fruit and the Green Gage plum which I've wanted to have for years has almost ten fruits swelling on its branches.


In spite of my garden reminding me why it feels so important to me to not lose my home it didn't impress me with a greater sense of stress.  What it told me while I was out there was that I need to walk the garden every day.  Like I used to.  While I have it.  For as long as I have it.  Because this is where the texture of life suggests itself to me the most strongly.  This is where I sharpen my wits.