Cultivate

Saying goodbye to Mystery

Those baby chicks, the ones that lived, they’ve grown older now, adolescents maybe. The one of many colors, the Joseph of the bunch is the first to consider the fish vertebrae I threw out the back door. When I see him peck for the meat left between the bones I do not question anything, even though moments before I judged myself for a day of circles, for running from one thing to the next.

Some days I’m not sure what to do. Today was one of those. I told myself that from noon to two I would spend saying goodbye to Mystery. I even cut the limbs of an extra special dwarf tamarillo and dug up the roots after eating all the berries. What is left is left to become a part of the earth.

The berries I ate today were a lesson in never giving up, in trying again and again, and in knowing that sometimes the berries of the winter or the oncoming winter rather. It’s hard to say winter when the temperature is eighty-six degrees, but there is a shift, less bugs, less destruction, and those berries glowed orange, some half eaten by finches or sparrows or some other bird with a small beak.

Those fan tailed birds swallow the berry whole, even the green ones, like a snake pushing a mouse down its throat, the bird leans back her head and does not even seem to chew. The cardinal pecks, even rips at the ripe berry.

These dwarf tamarillo can perhaps be bred at CRISP for size and for taste. I will save the berries of the sweetest, of the ones that go untouched by bugs so that what we have in the future is not by chance, but rather by observation.

There is a way to look back and consider a day when I ended my work feeling scattered and realize what I did get done. I moved some okra which may or may not make it. I moved some sissoo and some Egyptian spinach I know will carry on, for this leaf that many call molokhia was born for the heat, and there are plants I have found that flourish in this city. These are the plants that I wish to offer. 

So begins a new endeavor, one in which I no longer need to consider Mystery. I’m not making any kind of analogy here. I actually think it quite ironic, the folding of Mystery Garden, the unfolding of what has undergone so many iterations on Needle Street. I wonder what winter might bring.

Last night, Brian Banks told me that the white settlers prayed and begged and could not wait for winter to be over, whereas the indigenous peoples found winter a time to celebrate, to tell stories, to gather around a fire, to store up provisions and go under the snow for ground nut and other crops. 

We get no snow here in New Orleans. Still I would like to take these months to research, to read, to find out what it takes to have a greenhouse where I can breed plants, to not be so concerned with cutting away in order to keep the edges. I consider the starfruit tree that shades out the strawberry guava. I wonder whether a haircut might induce fruiting. 

I will make maps with measurements and later plants, what I’m going to put between what already exists, laying down the moringa roots and stalks I yanked from the ground. I wonder whether moringa could be grown by root cuttings. This is the excitement of finding out. This is the joy of the I don’t know mind.

I have a consultation in two and a half hours, my second Will in as many days. I wonder what will happen with this one. I wonder how best I might serve him, how I might help him to heal the soil, himself, and the world.