Growth in Our Collective Gardens

I stood barefoot in the garden. Moistened soil clings and squishes between my toes while my mother saturates the earth with a dusty pink pale. Mid-afternoon daylight strikes the top of my head like a burning cast iron, beads of sweat collecting at the nape of my neck. I was a poor gardener, unlike my mother. But I stood to be better company as she trowled around me. Smiling, hardly taking notice of the large stalk of ashy brown limbs that had sprouted alongside her butterfly bush. She enjoyed me there, even in her silence.

“I want to go inside,” I’d complain, more often than not. “It’s hot and I’m tired,” I said. Bouncing unsteadily as if to demonstrate my body's feebleness. I made within the hour, several overdramatic attempts at fainting from the heat. Throwing the back of my hand to my head, giving my best Blanche DuBois I griped over the sun, the dirt, the bugs, even the way the grass tickled my ankles, hoping my mother would find my presence more of a nuisance than a pleasure.  But I didn’t move from my spot in her garden, because she didn’t dismiss me. Instead, she let me moan, whine, groan, and wallow because it did her no harm and eventually, she thought, I’d tire myself out. So she continued to meet my juvenile behavior with silence as she dumped seeds and more water into her garden.

“It’s all going to die anyway,” I said.

I was tired more than I was angry, I’ll admit. My bite wasn’t meant to inflict any serious wounds, just rattle her stillness. Making my own way if she wouldn’t let me have it. At that moment, I wanted to step on something she intended to nurture, trusting that what I’d say would force her to give up. But she didn’t stop fussing with sheers or shovels and only put more holes into her piece of the earth.

“They might. But if I take care of them, maybe they won’t.” She said, patting the ground for good measure.

“Well, I don’t see why you would do any of this if you know they might die,”

“Because before they do, I hope they’ll grow to be something beautiful first.” 

I didn’t understand at the age between 7 and 10 that my mother was keenly aware that what she planted would take on a schrodinger’s scenario. This small wish buried within the earth had but two options. One finite and dismal, the other, seasonal beauty. For me it was simple, what we plant may never grow -- and the conditions that kept this seed tame couldn’t be predicted. Why plant flora that you couldn’t be sure would make it through the seasons? What if the winters were too harsh, or the summers a drought? Did what we plant stand a chance against ravenous squirrels or curious gophers? It was in my mind, a 50/50 shot in the dark. Gardening was an optimist's venture, and I was a realist. I couldn’t see what my mother saw in those seeds. I was relatively new to the avocation whereas my mother had already spent years pouring nutrients and care into two flowers that she carried from seed to sapling to full-grown trees. She had been told the probability of raising us, the likelihood of us making it to adulthood, but ever the optimist she pruned our dead branches, watered us at the feet, repotted us so we had room to grow, and only now stands peacefully shaded under her efforts. The seeds she’s planted had matured and reached full bloom, a miracle really.

I had only made this attempt once myself. I had come across raw and fertile soil one summer, that bared a short, brawny, and a rather loquacious seedling. His first caretakers had watered him well, if not at times too much. Watching him grow from seedling to sprout was some of my proudest moments as a gardener. To others, I boasted over the way he held morning dew when no one else was awake yet in the garden. He thrived in sunlight, often modeled for me under strong hues of golden rays, surrounded by other luminescent bulbs that couldn’t help but stare in envy. He danced in wind and drank in rain and never was it too much. He was a plant that needed little tending as he was aware of his intake and always abided by the mycelium process of sharing amongst his peers. I’d watch him grow new leaves with time, develop new roots that stretched miles underground, and take on vivid colors that suited his bloom. I’d seen in him what my mother saw in her own garden -- a righteous hope that my seed would transcend that kept him grounded and find solace above the clouds. Hearty and thick with aged rings circling his center. He was the greatest seed I’d ever planted, he had made me a flawless gardener. While he was not the seed I carried from birth, I amongst the other gardeners took to him devotedly and began my routine of pouring into him love and adoration. I pruned his dead leaves, weeded around him, I even took on the scientific approach and gave him music to listen to hoping an elevated mood would lead to steady growth. And it did, for a while. 

Over time though my guard fell and my expectation remained: this plant will grow undoubtedly. It’s sprouted from the earth, I’ve given it everything it’ll need. From here, it has nowhere else to grow but up. My optimism blinded me to the mold that would overcome his damp soil. Or the way his once bright green stem faded to callused white. When his leaves began to drop unseasonally, I moved him from the garden into my home where I watched how often and how much I watered him. I got him a grow light, placing him directly under it and willing him to bounce back. When the chill of December came I took him in hand and cocooned him against the warmth of my own body. Looking back, I think his time spent inside quickened his decay. His petals started to fall and he resisted my efforts to promote growth. Rejecting fertilizer and even the sun. His roots would start to shrivel and his connection to the garden vanished. When I asked my tender plant, what is it you need? How can I make this any better?, he told me stoically, and with what little of himself he still had mustered inside, I think I just need to take a break today.

When he died, the gardeners around me agreed: we never saw it coming. His growth was substantial. Until one day it wasn’t. He had withered away in front of us, but we only saw a plant that needed just a bit more tending too. Maybe more sun. A tad bit more light should’ve done it, we thought naively. We asked one another, were there any signs? Did he say anything that seemed off before he died? But in the end, we only had more questions than answers, and that left many of us very bitter inside. Myself included. I didn’t enjoy gardening after him, I even uprooted the seedlings I’d planted so gaily out of spite. I wanted to halt all new growth because what I wanted most to flourish could not. So I ripped at the earth until my fingernails were black, I damned the dirt for a false promise, and cried hot acidic tears, hoping the ground would soak them up and go sour. It seemed to me, ridiculous, to continue planting, watering, caring, and loving for something that would eventually die. Even if after years of consistent growing -- I couldn't bear to see another seed I’d loved suddenly stop on its ascension, and begin to plummet back to earth. No amount of growth could defeat the reality that death would come for all the seeds in my garden eventually. I was a realist who feared inevitability. Shunned it. From this, my own growth started to falter, and I could feel myself slowly coming to join my friend, my love, in his final resting place in the garden. But in mounds of dirt and tear-stained soil, my mother's words rose like cherry blossom buds.

“I hope they’ll grow to be something beautiful first.”

Death is the natural antithesis of growth. It hinders what we can, have, or will become, and still, it is the natural progression of life. I believe that death has the ability to blind us to what was once extraordinary because we become consumed with our own grappling with mortality. When my seedling, sprout, flower, and small tree died, I forgot about the beauty in his growth and bloom. I forgot how he danced when happiest, the small giraions that came from his hips when excited. How he looked best in all shades of blue. I forgot his smile and the birdish chirping that made up his laughter. I forgot his overzealous way of speaking, and the pitch he spoke in. I forgot the miracle that was his growth. In death, we forgo any wonders we’ve witnessed and focus solely on the outcome of our work. Why didn’t I water him enough, I should’ve given him more indirect light. These plaguing thoughts of what could I have done more, rather, look at what we’ve done. I don’t pat myself on the back nor do I blame myself anymore. I’m content now with what I was able to foster. And I must admit, my seed, my sprout, my flower, was beautiful. Even if only for a fleeting moment.

We plant seeds everywhere and in everything, hoping, that something will come of them; grow from them. With full knowledge what we plant may never see sunlight. Growth is constant deliberation, attention to detail, persistence, and tenacious care; it’s hope that our work will find fruition under low clouds and close kissing suns. We do this with a grave understanding that death may steal from us moments of beauty. But I’ll chance it, again and again, to pour into someone I love and possibly get to witness growth and bloom into something remarkable.

I stand in the garden with my mother now, watching as her tulips and daffodils sway aimlessly. It’s late July and she’s taken my moments of whining in stride. I sip water and perch on my knees sinking into the ground around me. She’s replanting and weeding, grumbling to herself about the deer that wander onto the lawn to snack on her perennials. I see in the corner of the garden a few roses that have begun to wilt their petals. Bright red goes deep burgundy, still smelling sweet and romantically taut, it’s a bit of a somber affair. I take a pair of shears from the ground and snip the last few roses at the root, taking them inside, placing them in a crystal vase and leaving them for my mother to see from the window. She smiles briefly and returns to the garden.

“Roses never stay around long,” she tells me, snipping at bleeding hearts.

“I know. But they were beautiful while they lasted.”

Kiersten Adams

(They/She) is a Philadelphia-based journalist and creative writer whose work centers Black womanhood at the intersections of the natural and unnatural world. Finding growth and repair in afro-futuristic, surrealist, and apocalyptic themes, her desire for writing comes in the form of seeing to fruition the possibilities of Black bodies and lives. When she isn’t writing, she can be found wandering the woods of the Wissahickon or meandering in meadows waiting to board the mothership.

Website: www.kierstenadams.com