It is essential to conceive of it [the soil] as something pulsating with life… There could be no greater misconception than to regard the earth as dead: a handful of soil is teeming with life. (Sir Albert Howard)
Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. (Wendell Berry)
Did you ever grow anything in a vegetable garden, or a flower garden? Do you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind? (Fred Rogers)
On a warm day in spring, three-year-old Anna clutches an assortment of seed packets and watches as her mother brings buckets as big as Anna herself out to the balcony, placing one in each corner and two in the middle, in front of the sliding door. She goes back inside and Anna looks into the buckets: one has her father’s tool box in it; another has a watering can and two little shovels like the one she has for going to the beach when the summer comes, except these are silver instead of pink; and the last two have green-and-yellow bags with pictures of flowers and bees on their fronts and one white bag with no pictures on it. Beneath Anna hums the hive of traffic. She hears the sigh from the trucks as they slow to the stop at the end of the block and the cough, quick and declarative, as they start again.
The sliding door opens and her mother steps back onto the balcony. Close your eyes, she tells Anna. Anna closes them and feels her mother take the seed packets out of her hands and in their place is something soft and wrapped in paper, like a present. Okay, you can open them now. Anna opens her eyes and unwraps the paper from a pair of gloves, gardening gloves, just like the ones mormor and farmor have, except these are stiff instead of soft and smell like soap instead of rain and dirt and mushrooms before they are cooked. And I have some, too, her mother says, and helps Anna put the gloves on and then puts on her own.
Anna picks up the seed packets again and watches as her mother takes the tool box from the bucket, plugs it into the socket, sets it on the ground. Watching her mother turn the barrels over with her quick strength, Anna feels an excitement come up from her feet to her lips and she hums to herself and shakes the seed packets in time. Taking the drill, her mother puts three holes in the pattern of a triangle at the bottom of each bucket. Ready for the dirt, she asks. Ready, says Anna. Her mother hefts one of the green-and-yellow bags and rips it open; dirt starts to fall from the tear and her mother is quick to swing the stream into the bucket. Ready—now push it upside down, she tells Anna. Anna pushes the bag until the dirt is dumped out into the bucket and together they shake the bag for good measure. They do this with each bag until all the buckets are filled with the dirt.
Now for the fun part, her mother says. Time to plant the seeds. First, her mother shows her how to make the indentation in the soil where the seeds will go. Push your finger down, no, farther than that, all the way down, there you go. Next, she drops the seeds into the hole and directs Anna to do the same. After they plant the first set of seeds, the lettuce seeds, her mother takes the white bag, the one that has no pictures on it, and opens it. Inside are bunches of small white sticks and sheaves of stickers. On the stickers are pictures of vegetables, lettuce and cucumbers and tomatoes and green beans, and of flowers, of daisies and dahlias and snapdragons. These are the labels, sweet pea, her mother says. You put the sticker on the stick and then we put the stick next to the seeds that go with that sticker. Like this one—which one is this. Lettuce, Anna answers. Right, and what did we just plant. Lettuce, Anna answers again. That’s right. So Anna puts the lettuce sticker on the white stick and stabs the stick into the dirt. Now we know that this is where our lettuce seeds are and we can give them the right amount of water. What does lettuce make. What. What do we make to eat with lettuce. Salad, Anna says. And do you like salad, or no. I like the stickers, Anna says. Can I do another sticker. After we plant some more seeds.
The sun is high in the sky and hot on their heads when the last of the seeds is planted. Time for a break, sweet pea, her mother says. Anna sits back and feels, fully and suddenly, aware of her thirst and hunger and aches. I’m all done, mama. How about I get your lunch and you can sit right here, in this little spot of shade, and eat it, while I water the seeds. Does that sound good. Yes, Anna answers. That sounds good. I’m so hungry. Just wait here. I’ll be right back.
Anna sits in the shade and stares at the barrels and thinks about the seeds under the soil and tries to feel what it would be like for a seed to be in the soil.
Is it like sitting here in the shade (the sun around you but not on you). Is it like going to bed. Is it like it sleeping. Is it like dreaming.
Her mother sets a plate and a glass next to her and Anna eats her lunch and drinks the water.
Is it like taking a bath in the tub. Is it like drinking water. Is it like standing in the rain and catching the drops in your mouth. Is it like dancing to the music.
Her mother settles next to her on the balcony, leans against the wall, lifts her own glass of water to her lips and drinks. Anna watches her throat roll and ripple to the flow of the water.
Is it like crawling through the tunnels at the park. Is it like climbing on a tree. Is it like playing in the sandbox at farmor’s house. Is it like all of them. Is it like being right here with mama.
Some days later Anna dreams that the garden the balcony grows and grows and grows and the vegetables rise all around her like trees in a forest. A brook babbles at her feet, fed by a waterfall from somewhere overhead. Everything is larger than life itself: not only can she smell the seeds as they begin to live and move beneath the soil, but she can see the plants, the vegetables and flowers themselves, actually growing. They move as if to the music of some deep, secret magic: the movement starts at their roots and runs along to the very end of their branches and shakes their leaves and the fruit of their inner magical workings. Anna stands before a sunflower taller than ten of her, turns her face up to the warm haze of its dusky disk and golden halo, and hears the music of the plants and thinks to join their dance, but then the light from the sunflower is too bright and she closes her eyes and when she opens them again she is in her own bed and it is morning.
She falls out of bed, runs through her parents’ empty room, the living room, into the kitchen. The door to the balcony is slid open, but there is no forest. No lines after lines of lettuce; no rows upon rows of radishes; no vast array of asparagus; no torrent of tomatoes ascending and descending on their trellis; no fairy-tale frenzy of her favorite flowers grown higher than her head; no waterfall down the building, sending its life-giving spray to the plants; no bright beams of morning sun heralding the new day’s glorious growth. There is no forest. There is not even the garden. What used to be the garden is now scattered across the balcony. Dirt is everywhere. Plants are torn and thrown about, their leaves torn, their roots exposed.
Her mother stands amidst the wreckage. Her mother is crying. Those squirrels, those stupid squirrels. Why do we even bother. She kneels down in the dirt and picks through the plants, throws them back into the buckets, sweeps the dirt with her hands and flings it into the buckets as well. What a waste, she says through her tears. What a waste. In the dirt behind her mother lies one of the plastic plant labels. Anna sits down in the dirt and picks it up and turns it over and sees the daisy sticker and the dream is finally, definitely over. There is no forest. There is no garden. Anna starts to cry and her tears fall into the dirt at her feet and when her mother swings around to snatch her to herself, to speak a comfort Anna does not, can not, will not, feel, her knees mix the tears into the soil and it all sticks damply, loosely, to their skin. It’s okay, her mother says, it’s okay. We can put it all back. We can plant more seeds and the garden will grow again. You’ll see. It’s okay.
That night Anna climbs out of bed, runs through her parents’ empty room, crosses the living room and climbs onto the couch, pulls the pillows around her, and—hidden from view of the kitchen, where her mother and father sit together in the quiet—takes a deep breath and listens. Her mother is telling her father about the garden, about the squirrels, about the dirt and the daisy stick, about the plan to plant more seeds and get that garden to grow again.
When she finishes, her father replies: You planted that garden two weeks ago. Will the seeds actually still grow. I hope so, her mother answers. I told Anna they would. But this is all new to me. You’ve gardened before. Not in a city, I haven’t. Not in buckets on a balcony that gets baked by the sun and beat by the wind. That, her mother says, is all new to me. I have never gardened like that.
A chair is pushed back and Anna tries to burrow deeper down into the couch without making a sound. Do seeds make sounds.
When will you plant again, her father asks. His voice is nearer now. Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow. Great, he answers. Well, I found a seedling over here for you. Anna opens her eyes and her father is standing over her. He scoops her up, carries her into the kitchen, places her in on her mother’s lap. Anna settles back against her mother and feels her mother’s cheek press against hers. Her father sits across down from them and raises his glass. To the garden, he says.
The next day is another warm day in spring and they set themselves again to growing their garden. They salvage the seedlings that survived the squirrels and settle them back in the soil. They plant more seeds to replace the ones that were lost. Soon they are in the rhythm of the work. Her mother hums under her breath and Anna is quiet and intent on the process: push the soil, drop the seed, push the soil, drop the seed.
They are on the last bucket when her mother breaks the quiet. You know, when I was a little girl, she says, I planted seeds with mormor in her garden. Only her garden was right in the ground, not in barrels like ours. Was it a big garden. Yes, it was a big garden. With many seeds in it. Yes, it had many seeds in it, more seeds than we can fit in our garden. If we planted as many seeds out here on our balcony as mormor planted in her garden, all the vegetables and all the flowers would be too many for the barrels and they would grow out onto the ground and climb up the walls and the door and it would be like a forest more than a garden. Anna rocks back on her heels and her dream roars back into her mind. Plants climb out from the buckets and grow up the walls and reach up like trees high into the sky. Her dream-garden is a real garden: it is not this garden, the one she and mama are making, but this garden is still part of it, just like her mormor’s garden, in another time, another place, another world, is part of it.
Her mother is pouring water from the watering-can over each bucket and Anna can see the beads of sweat dripping from her mother’s hairline and the smell of coconut comes to her nose: her mother’s shampoo. Do coconuts go in gardens, she asks. No, coconuts grow on trees. In the tropics. Coconuts need lots and lots of hot, hot sun. The sun is hot hot on me, Anna says. On her mother’s neck is a smear of dirt where she rubbed it and the sweat runs through it. Can I water the seeds, mama. Yes, of course. Just take off your gloves so you can hold the can, okay.
Anna takes her gloves off and feels the sweat on her palms and between her fingers and takes the watering can and pours some water out. The flow is fast and heavy and the water hits a white stick, the stick with the daisy sticker, and knocks it over. A little too much there, her mother says. That’s good, sweet pea. Here, let me take the water and you can put the daisy stick back in the soil for me.
Anna takes the stick and pushes it again into the dirt. Without her gloves on, she feels the warmth and wet of the soil for the first time and that hum of excitement charges through her again and she puts her hands to her face and inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the air of the earth and the water and the fire of the sun. I can smell the garden, mama, she exclaims. I can smell the garden growing in the dirt.
Credit: Pekka Halonen, Tomaatteja (1913), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.