If only it were that easy.
CHAPTER 4
I've never been completely happy with the garden plot I inherited along with our house. There are parts of it that have worked for me; I’ve always liked the purple puffballs of the chives in late June. A few color combinations have given me pleasure when I’ve meandered through the paths; the surprise of gray-stemmed poppies, springing up from between the clumps of sage, rose-hued sedums spilling out from a backdrop of deep green currant bushes are always a warming sight even on the gloomiest of Seattle days. But overall, I’ve come to feel like the steward of a needy miniature world with which I’ve had neither a substantial connection nor any real affinity: forced responsibility without real acceptance.
My partner Shayne and I bought the property in the spring of 2001. Although the land had actually been harvested of its old-growth trees by a lumber company decades earlier, the previous owners took what had been, for them, an untouched parcel of land, and carved the landscape as they had envisioned their own private universe. The acreage once again was thick with lush ferns, huckleberry bushes, and towering evergreens. They built a small house and a few useful outbuildings, and commenced to create pockets of gardens throughout the five-acre piece. We were enchanted by the place at our first viewing.
Shayne, a landscape designer, eagerly embraced the ornamental gardens and I was “gifted” with the vegetable garden, the one collection of plantings that we felt I could handle without ruining, to take on as my very own. The rigid rows of onions, beans, and various leafy edibles outlined the garden like a map, sandy paths crisscrossing in a reliably familiar grid. Here and there a perennial popped up—delphiniums, black-eyed Susans, and irises of several colors drew the eye over the tops of the salad-fixings. For the first season, everything was wonderful. Our salad bowls were full, the mulch dutifully spread by the previous owners did its job, and I moved into autumn loving the garden I now called my own.
An experienced gardener would have known what to expect in the coming season, but I was a novice. This was all new to me. Months went by, things died back, others awoke. Dandelions I’d pulled weeks earlier seemed to suddenly regenerate, poking from the soil to tantalize me with their bright yellow heads before exploding into a thousand tiny skydiving seeds. Forget-me-nots I’d gazed over lovingly last season now ran rampant, filling the beds that were supposed to be coming up cabbages. Another detail I’d yet to learn: vegetables are not perennial. They must be planted every season. The Northwest Gardener’s Guide pushed me even further—apparently I was expected to sow new seeds each month, to ensure a year-round vegetable medley.
I worked in the preformed beds, occasionally trying seeds and starts, half-heartedly harvesting arugula, chard, mustard greens, and several varieties of radishes, each spicier than the next. I pulled weeds, and the muscles of my lower back. I raked my arms on wild blackberry vines and welted my face on clandestine nettle plantlets hiding under the gooseberry bushes. Season upon season, I hopelessly functioned as the begrudging caretaker of this white elephant that was my garden. The areas left unattended were, to the many invasive species waiting in the wings, an absolute dream. Tiny green worms infested the gooseberries and, in spite of pruning the bushes nearly to the dirt each year, the little guys showed up reliably every spring like an unwanted relative. The few plants with which I’d begun to have an affinity were quickly devoured by hordes of slugs. Before long, the weeds outnumbered the vegetables and the only things left were fennel and lavender and the various roses that the automatic sprinklers could reach. I was done.
The reality was that I’d had neither the interest nor the drive to address my garden with any level of enthusiasm. After all, it was a thing—however potentially beautiful—not of my own creation. I’d inherited it and perhaps within that mere fact sprung my bitterness and stubborn resolve. I’d had no control, no ownership of what grew in there, just the responsibility to keep it going regardless of what filled in the borders and what lay hidden under the branches. Pests, noxious weeds, dead foliage.
I’d become convinced that I was stuck with what was already there. After all, I had neither the knowledge nor the skills to substitute or change any part of it. This collection of flora and the three hundred square feet of soil on which it existed was mine and I’d always believed that if I intended for life to continue upon that same square, I would have to walk its rows and work within the frames I had been given.
My garden, with its excruciating constrictions and unyielding frustrations, had become a reflection of my life. I’d felt trapped by the branches of the family tree that loomed massive over my head. In my mind it formed an immovable canopy blocking even the tiniest slivers of light. Alcoholism, violence, and dysfunction of the worst kind formed the roots that were my culture, shaping my very essence, and they were hidden far below the surface, too deep to even consider. I had my mother’s eyes, my father’s nerves, and all the baggage that came along with the genes that transferred those traits to me. In a sense, I was stuck.
But not completely.
It was a late summer Saturday, early enough in the day to escape the heat of a high sun but late enough to avoid angering the neighbors with the roar of the motor. I dragged the rototiller across the driveway and up the center of the garden, right next to where the spinach and clover had been just weeks before, and I wondered: How long will it take me to tear up three hundred square feet of weedy ground? No matter. Gripping the handle, I planted my feet firmly in the dirt and pulled the cord.
CHAPTER 5
"What do you want to go diggin' there for?" he’d asked. “Drunks, thieves, and jailbirds. That’s all you’ll find.” Famously, my mother’s great-uncle George had announced this to his daughter Valoyce when she expressed an interest in our family tree. She’d told this to my mother and, some years later, my mother told me.
“I don’t know what you expect to find,” she’d said when I brought up the subject of a genealogical search. “But I guess I’m a little curious, too.”
Uncle George’s words made no difference to me, really. After all, I’d seen plenty of vices in my lifetime, right on my own branch of the family tree. Alcoholism, petty theft, trials, and convictions had each made regular appearances in my family since I could remember. What stories could I possibly find in my lineage that would be more scandalous than those that existed in my own memories? I was hungry for information and eager to start looking. So, in spite of Uncle George’s warning, I pushed ahead without hesitation.
* * *
Renovating a garden can’t be done impulsively. I’ve learned that it takes planning and foresight—an understanding of where the garden stands and a vision of where it will be. Before ripping up the soil, I’d lifted the plants I’d planned to keep in my new garden—the roses, herbs, and currants—and carefully set them aside, safe from the churning blades of the tiller. A meticulous line of fluorescent-orange spray paint snaked through the square, a template I’d drawn for the path I envisioned winding through a cutting garden of color, scents, and excited bees. I wanted real change, a move from rigid predictability to a feeling of brightness and visual nourishment.
I like the warmth of a big bouquet. I get a far greater burst of pleasure gathering sunflowers, delphiniums, and lavender sprigs than I could ever get from cabbages and carrots. Even as a child, I recognized the joy that a fistful of flowers could bring. Flowers then were gifts of opportunity. Wildflowers gathered in the meadows across the road from my maternal grandmother’s house and stuffed into the neck of one of my grandfather’s beer bottles never failed to bring squeals of glee from her, and she’d tell us the story of her father’s funeral once again.
“The shops were all closed to honor him; it was like a parade, all down Main Street,” she’d say, her lips bent in a proud grin at the memory of her daddy, a revered county prosecutor. “There were so many flowers at his office and the house, you’d think there wasn’t a single bloom left atop a stem in