My Why is You

Saving sunflower heads for seed and eating long bean

To know the why behind what I do, I get up too early in the morning and assess my seeds. I consider writing to all the companies, asking for donations. Baker Creek has blessed me for years. I write to Anna who gives away seeds to ask about a comprehensive list of when to start flowers and herbs and how I’d like to add this to what is already known about annuals and subtropicals and make this available on my website.

I’m not here to tell you what getting up at three in the morning is like. I’m here to discuss the people we meet along the way when we get to the garden. I’m not sure why I choose we, if there are many mes living in my head or if this is a second person plural form that just comes out sometime. The first person I saw was my direct boss, the man to whom I sent the invoices. 

“It’s looking good,” he said. These are the kindest words he has offered since we met.

I planted bronze fennel and strawberry guava at the entrances. I snuck some pitanga into the front strip on Alvar and at the base of some dying sunflowers in the hopes that their decaying roots would feed the young pitanga.

I arrived before anybody who worked for the school. It was the day after a rain and everything looked so peaceful, a green reach for the sky, a salutation that plants offer the clouds, an upright posture of meditation. 

I dropped bean seeds in different boxes, around seedlings of surinam cherry and strawberry guava. I popped some around eggplant to give the young plants a hit of nitrogen. And I cut some stems of molokhia and popped these into a different box to see if they would take root. I did the same with sissoo spinach, knowing she would definitely grow. This experimentation, this learning, this finding new ways of doing things is what has always appealed to me.

I don’t always remember order, but I believe Bradley and Batiste called out from the school side of the street. Quite the pair, the older man Bradley at six foot six and the lady Batiste maybe five feet. I walked toward them while they walked toward me. I told Bradley I was starting Swiss Chard and Collards in plug trays because I know he loves to pick those. When I worked with kids in the garden the two would come out because there were some kids who always had to have extra adults around. These kids i liked the most. The unpredictable ones. The ones who seemed to slow down when I gave them something to do with their hands.

I said, “You’ll appreciate this Bradley. Being a former athlete.” Then I remembered Batiste wrestled in high school, kicked a bunch of dude’s asses and always smiled when I brought this up. “You too, Batiste. After a day of work, i take off my drenched clothes and am brought right back to the smell of the locker room.”

I saw Arion or Arion. I can’t remember which. I think Air is the first syllable. Not are. I do know that she went and changed the pronunciation of her name in grade school while away from her parents and this I can appreciate. She notices the bench under the moringa, asks, “What we got in here, George?” I show her zinnia and tithonia and give her some bronze fennel to smell, tell her the roselle will be flowering soon. She says she needs to bring the kids out. And that’s who I want to walk through, to experience.

The last people I see come just to talk gardening. Ally I have never met.

“I wondered if I could get some sunflower seeds,” she says.

“That’s exactly why I grow them.” I retrieved a head I cut that morning from the truck. I cut another of a different variety

 She lives in Midcity and knows some of what is growing. I give her a long bean and a taste of molokhia. I offer a cutting of sissoo and tell her I have a lot of plants. She said she has a lemonade citrus tree she wants to give to somebody who will take care of it before she moves to Boston.

“I’m somebody,”

Right as she is about to leave, Brian from Pauline comes by with his little Yorkie. Quite a pair, that little dog and the tall man with one long dred. He also wants sunflower seeds. I pop a head for him.

“Better get this yapping girl home.”

I drive by Brion’s house and see it is all lawn. Grass. The fig tree he told me about must be in the backyard. I like a blank canvas, and I text to tell him there is so much we could do with that front yard. He agrees. 

My why is you. And I don’t know which one of you I will meet tomorrow. And my why is me. And my why is you and me sharing what we know and growing together.