[Garden Memories: I]
As the story goes, when my parents bought our five acre piece of property, it was a long drive from urban Sacramento where they lived and it was the least desirable parcel because of it’s lack of trees. They were not deterred, as the distance made it affordable and the dry, empty land could be remedied with hard work and patience.
They built a humble ranch house and immediately got to work planting trees. Hundreds of trees. Liquidambars, pines, eucalyptus, Japanese maples, willows, figs, plums, apples, and others. Comparing pictures from those early days (before my time) and the property of my memories, is almost as drastic as comparing a desert to a fertile oasis.
In my core is a unique disposition that is more native than it is noticeable: barren land ought to be nurtured toward fertility and abundance.
I often wonder if all my gardening efforts are really me finally giving way to a fate that was already scripted, not by some divine puppeteer but by the practices of my parents that happened subtly in the backdrop of my childhood. Perhaps I’m simply discovering new language for what they have always done.
Mom landscaped; I garden.
Mom laid drip to water; I irrigate.
Dad cleaned up and mowed; I steward and weed and cultivate.
Mom pruned and trained; I thin and harvest and trellis.
All my gardening, in a way, is an honoring of their hard work. It’s an exercise in embodied thankfulness to the investments they made in creating a flourishing environment for me to grow up in. When I sprouts seeds, transplant, harvest, and even preserve the fruit of my own land, I’m in no small way expressing my appreciation for that once-barren five acres that became a gorgeous green landscape.
