Amanda
Covid has stolen the little sense of knowing I thought I had. How can I talk about communication when I don’t recognize myself, my friends, my community? I’m rendered mute thinking about where I belong. I am lost, out of sorts, awkward, paranoid and pissed off.
Compulsory aloneness perpetuates my I-don’t-need-anyone fortress. I seek meaning and connection in nature - more than ever before.
Walking the same route in the woods behind my house, every day feels brand new. I notice and listen more intently. Tracks, trickling water, mushrooms. I try to identify more plants - crushing between my fingers, smelling, tasting. I walk lightly, slowly, curiously.
I make sourdough like every other new baker emerging out of the woodwork and wonder at how this pandemic is bringing out the homesteader in everyone. How we will survive when systems fail and the world implodes.
Garden dreams consume me. I turn soil. I make compost. Lots of it - collecting from friends too.
I marvel at my spring hands, soft and fragile, pawing the earth. Dirt-encrusted nails make wells, drop seeds – and as I pat and water each one, I sing “see you soon”.
I contemplate the oddness of gardening – a dance with mother nature. She entertains me. I see her sly smile, knowing she can wipe out my efforts in one fell swoop. She’s amused and gracious - I am grateful.
This feels like the only real relationship I have right now. How can my conversations grow from here?
I will allow my imagination to roam like roots in rich dark soil, deepening my connection to the earth.
Expanding and radiating outward.
It was to be the first summer, for as long as I can remember, of just being home - not working for anyone other than myself. Tackling new and unfinished projects I never have time and money for - jacking up the old shed, trimming out the beam and counter, adding light fixtures to the years-old dangling wires, painting.
This year’s garden was to be magnificent. Brimming and bursting with veggies, herbs, flowers.
Then came a prodding to find a job, a tip toward a gardener posting, an application and an offer of hire. And my summer dream was changed.
The position was working at the St. George & Area Food Bank in a summer student position - running a gardening program. The job was straightforward - plant one small 20ft x 35ft garden and six beds at the community garden, be available for an open garden time each week, and be willing to be filmed or photographed for garden-related facebook posts.
But I am a dreamer and a natural teacher, and social justice courses through my veins. And my boss was onboard with all my ideas.
Before I knew it, I had established a relationship with the YMCA and was teaching kids about gardening, pollinators and the wind. I was formulating a curriculum, cutting paper pinwheels, reciting garden poetry, stuffing scarecrows - twice a week. I was attending town meetings and petitioning for improved community garden maintenance, a port-a-potty and more beds. Donors were bringing me tray upon tray of seedlings, more seed packets and my community bed count went up to fifteen.
Still, I needed more! I reclaimed a dormant garden behind an adjacent senior’s complex. Begged for manure, put up fences. Hoed beds and planted, planted, planted.
I became a networking queen. Talking to anyone who would listen. Posting pictures of weekly cornucopias of fresh produce. Hosting a garden party. Passion bubbled up through me.
The YMCA kids came to the Food Bank Garden for the first time today. I ask – have any of you gardened before? Girl, maybe 10, white-blond bob squeaks: “I can’t get my shoes dirty” looking down at her glittery pink sneakers. Boy, sharp features to match his sharp attitude – thrusts his fists to the ground declaring,“I hate gardening … my mom gardens but I hate it.”
I present two baskets.
One has seed potatoes red, white and blue – wildly sprouting eyes. I teach the how-to of making trenches, adding manure, planting one foot apart.
The second basket holds packs of fast-growing seeds – radish, green and yellow beans – and color-coded popsicle sticks. Cultivator tool in hand, I demonstrate making three small rows across beds, how deep and wide to plant seeds and the need to water.
Tools are passed out, leaders are delegated, kids are grouped and a mad planting frenzy ensues. Kids are teaching kids. There is laughter and everyone is dirty. Kids take turns filling the 4 watering cans more times than I can count.
The girl is no longer worried about her shoes.
The boy punches his hands to the sky, singing a contradictory “I love gardening – I’m going to ask my mom if I can come next week.”
Certainly, as the tallest, stockiest boy, he could be mistaken for the bully. But his deep-wide brown eyes, fringed black, speak more than his timid voice.
It’s in the way he cocks his head, not in his downcast eyes, that I know he is listening to every word I say. I sense his patience with the so-many-hyper-kids’ commotion.
I tell the story of 4 sisters: tall silky-haired corn, small twine-y green bean, running in the sun squash, and round-faced sunflower. We discuss how these sisters help and complement each other – both in legend and in real life.
Taking turns, four kids at four corners of square garden beds, we dig. Plastic trowels make holes for ready seedlings. Small fingers push and pat bean seeds. And excited bodies fight over filling watering cans.
I feel proud of my revolving stations of activities that have kept twelve kids engaged, and rejoice at dirt-smeared glee and hose-soaked shoes.
The following week, big-brown-eyes sidles up, offering his shy generous smile. In a charged whisper he tells me how he went home and told his aunt the story of the 4 sisters. She loved it – eagerly declaring that – “next year WE are going to plant the 4 sisters too”.
squash flowers ripe with heat, buzz
fuzzy black bottoms, three, four
undulate and loll in drunken bliss
powdered yellow, pushing deeper,
languidly sipping nectar sweet
I, a voyeur blushing, giggling
ridiculously embarrassed
It’s a funny thing to know you’re being watched. If I see the small blue pick-up truck as I make my way over to the seniors’ garden, I know that I will have a visit from Laurence.
It makes sense. After all, this was once his garden, his dream. Creating this space with railroad ties, scrap wood, chicken wire – he once grew a 40-pound pumpkin fertilized with seaweed alone.
But his seniors’ complex companions didn’t step up and help out - and in his disappointment he dismantled. Took down the fence and let the deer and wildflowers take over.
He’s interested in my revitalization – listening intently as I repeatedly yell into his turned-too-low hearing aids.
He tells me about the 18 double yolkers he gets at Uncle Mayne’s for $4 that he and his wife eat every morning; about taking his truck in for a recall; paying bills and how turnip greens are the best. He admits to sneaking into the garden and stealing tomatoes and asks me to save the big green ones for frying.
I think about the years you can work a ground. That someday I too will be old. That someone may take my place and dig the same soil. Or it may go back to its nature – forgotten.
But in the meantime, Laurence and I connect in this space. Bonding over our unspoken but shared pleasure and knowledge of the sweat and toil that is gardening.
He sees me and he knows. My hands in the dirt, he remembers. In some strange way, I sense that he is living this experience through me. And I am happy to be lived through.
Grand dame of willows
weeping
Your girth beckons
under shady skirt
silvery plume
great great grandmother
lying reverent
roots reaching wide
through dirt, rock, bone
a portal to ancient
conversations
Warm wind blows and catches my breath
The sound of gushing water from the nearby gorge floods my ears
Dew seeps through my shoes
I have a cackly conversation with the telephone wire crows
Eagles and seagulls faintly screech in the distance
I have beat the heat
Squishing still-lazy unsuspecting squash beetles
I apologize each time
I water, nibbling morning lettuce between hot-thermos gulps of coffee
I am missing the early abundance of wild strawberries
But notice red and white clover, plantain, camomile, wood sorrel and dandelion
littering the surrounding grass
I will make tea and a wild-plant scavenger hunt
Despite the 25 minute commute,
I feel at home here
I already know that even when the plants stop blooming, turn brown and die
My work won’t be done
This serendipitous summer was a gift
Amanda de Gruchy
Amanda de Gruchy is a Montreal-raised artist living in New Brunswick. With both college and university training in the fine arts under her belt, Amanda is experienced and creative in her use of various mediums. From embroidery and papier mache to painting and poetry, her wide set of skills are used to create visceral visions of vitality and vulnerability.
Amanda is also available for custom work and can be contacted by email at: degroovy71@gmail.com