Ours

I sit inside this house and wait for packages that are supposed to come. It is not my house. I do not really know the people who live here. They stayed at my airbnb years ago. They stayed again. And now they bought a place right here in the 9th Ward.

I asked the man what he thought about me putting down some tropical fruit trees and really making this place beautiful, abundant with fruit. His name is Edgar. 

He said, “I was going to ask you to do that.” 

So here I have another client. But it’s more than that. It’s about spreading what I know so that more people can have this, so that we might have an edible forest right here in the 9th Ward. I guessed with a name like Edgar that he came from somewhere hot, from somewhere where fruit dripped. 

I don’t know if this experience is what led me to a video with Paul Zink in Costa Rica, taking another man called Green Dreams through his edible food forest. I watched this young man stop and taste from trees. I watched him climb like a monkey to grab jackfruit. I have to consider whether we might combine the right amount of stone and brick wall along with a pond to grow jackfruit right here in New Orleans.

There is one across the street at Matthew’s. He keeps chopping it down because he’s worried about some pipes under the ground, but that jackfruit keeps popping back up from the roots. So once you get that baby established, could it withstand a winter? Could we take seedlings and cull them much as people do with chickens?

What I’m doing is important. This is what I keep coming to lately. I want to add some blackberry jam fruit to go with my peanut butter fruit tree. And I want to take the seeds from this and spread what I know wherever people will let me.

If the problem is indeed the solution, then here is what I’ve come up with: I do not have a lot of space. And yet, I have the entire city. I do not have enough seeds. And yet I will have access to all that I grow.

It’s interesting to google tithonia diversifolia. One man will tell you the plant is the devil while another will tell you the benefits of using this plant the right way far surpass any other kind of green manure, including comfrey. So if we can teach that the greens of this plant might be chopped and used around fruit trees it will not spread and take over everything, and even if it does, so be it. 

When yours and mine becomes ours there will be fruit hanging over every fence. I have my good friends, Kenny and Angie and I feel like my success will lead to more success for them. I feel that each of us have our own unique gifts to bring into the equation, to spread life and joy. 

All this hits me in a house of people who trust me without really knowing me. All of this hits me in the fact that I trust myself. Some days are best left for quiet inspiration inside. 

This day I think of taking the tips of the tithonia and spreading these around the pitangatuba I’ve had growing for five years now. I imagine that tree dripping with fruit. I imagine those seeds growing.

And I know that one year from now I will have at least twenty clients. I will know how to graft. And there will be abundance around me and within all of those I encounter. I know this after two months of writing everyday.