Classical frogs
The flowers of peanut butter fruit
June through August are not the time to fight. These days were made for watching, for seeing what happens, for feeding the top layer of soil, for collecting what others have tossed. I know branches rest beneath the pear trees on Villere. Branches that came from the trees planted by old Mr. J, the first man, well…the only man to sell me a refrigerator after I moved into this house in 2013.
What is important? What is urgent? What is necessary? Often I run from task to task without considering this. Today I realized that I should plug an hour into each day for organizing and to be specific about what will be organized. Tomorrow all the pots that lay scattered in different spots will be gathered and stacked and kept in the shed to get to the times they are needed. To take a page from Marie Kondo, I might use all these small plastic boxes I have to put like tools with like, snips and secateurs separate from trowels and spoons.
Have I told you the best labels? The strips from old white window blinds fit perfectly into plug trays and take on Sharpie marker well. For plants that remain longer one might use a pencil.
My nephew’s dad died last night. He was alcoholic. Like me. I don’t know why I’m here and he isn’t. I know I found something. Some would call this God, others the universe, still others a sense of connection. Some believe that rain falls onto trees. Others, like me, believe that the trees reach up and communicate with the sky and the more trees the more the likelihood of rain. The trees are the lungs of the earth.
My lungs have known damage, all self inflicted save the air so many of us breathe. I smoked for years. Finally quit in 2015. And today I swim. But what about the trees? What about creating a canopy? What about communication?
This I consider in the heat of the day, six weeks after first putting down seeds and cuttings at Ron’s. Most could not see much. But I see a beginning. I see relationships between what has grown. I know the cassia that survived did so because of shelter from the bean leaves. I know that the spots that get less of the midday sun seem to be more vibrant after all of these days without rain.
I consider asking Ron to look at the sun. To watch for a day. Most of us would say we don’t have this time.
Ron put his scraps in a bucket to compost. I gave him two. He added cardboard, but did this in chunks the dimension of a paperback book. What I need to explain is all of the relationships, how carbon and nitrogen work together, how nitrogen wants thin strips of cardboard so the two elements can do this dance that is making soil.
Ron wanted the edges of his sidewalk whacked and in my doing this I killed a lizard. This lizard I buried in the back corner with Ron’s cardboard compost. This is what I have to teach. This devotion. This reverence. This sense that this lizard blessed this land. And there are many lizards. And many thrips. And some would want to fix what is turning the leaves white.
This mindset I have had. This mindset corrodes the health of all. This notion of treating particular symptoms, of separating everything, rather than seeking to find how the whole fits together. This was the unknowing mindset when I thought that what I planted was there to serve me.
This same mindset kills soil, kills us, and kills the connection that nature exists in without my permission. So we watch and wait.
I can hear a frog outside the window now. We listen to Rachmaninoff. There are many frogs now. They talk to each other. Maybe they know the piano. Maybe we know each other.
And maybe in this ninety degree heat, the gift we get to see is the peanut butter fruit tree, loaded with flowers, growing atop my old dog Banjo. And maybe, somewhere in the space between in breath and out breath my nephew’s dad is finally free.
