Once We Were Nomads

Margaret Atwood
Foreword to A Breath of Fresh Air: Celebrating Nature and School Gardens by Elsie Houghton

Describing the Post-War period after the Victory Gardens disappeared:

There was an undeniable emotional charge to throwing stuff out. Scrimping, saving and hoarding make a person feel poor — think of Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol — whereas dispensing largesse, whether in the form of a prize goose, as in Scrooge's case, or in the form of filling up your garbage can with junk you no longer want, makes you feel rich. Saving is heavy, discarding is light. Why do we feel this way? Once we were nomads, and nomads don't carry around grand pianos. They don't hoard food; instead they move to where food is. They leave a light footprint, as the green folk say. Well, it's a theory.

But we can't all be nomads any more. There isn't enough space left for that.

Not enough space and not enough grace. Just enough humour.

And so for day 2395
04.07.2013

Earth Spell

The opening lines of "With the Earth of the Garden Still on Them"

My hands with the earth of the garden still on them,
dirt worked under the nails, into the creases of knuckle, palm,
life line, heart line. Sullen smell of diesel exhaust.

move from a horticultural activity ingrained into the very palmistry of the hand to stench that is of another organic chemistry that of hydrocarbons. This poet, she is an urban gardener attuned to diversity. See the anaphoric stroll down a street in "June Elegy" which takes in the views offered by various yards.

The yard that has room in its heart for
one rosebush.
The yard with slim yellow irises.
The yard with gravel.
The yard with the wrought-iron fence,
box hedge; the gate snapping shut.
[…]
The yard with columbine and columbine and columbine.
[…]
The yard with garbage cans.
The yard with tricycles.
With sunlight.
Trash.
The yard with snow-in-summer, honey locust,
star-of-Bethlehem, periwinkle,
in bloom.

Rhea Tregebov (alive)

And so for day 1532
22.02.2011

Libraries, Gardens and Arabian Nights

I have always thought of gardens as libraries — housing genetic material to be read and recombined. Cameron Smith in the Toronto Star (June 14, 2003) in "The army in our gardens" makes a similar point.

A garden, then is a storybook of life. You can read as much, or as little, as you like. It is so full of stories, you will never come to the end. And, as in The Arabian Nights, each story so fascinates, you end up longing for the next one.

Smith goes on to review a book. A Breath of Fresh Air: Celebrating Nature and School Gardens by Elise Houghton with photographs by Robert Christie. He writes:

The book has 129 colour photographs of ponds, gardens, rehabilitated areas, and — the ones I like the most — of children, and their expressions of wonder.

If I can't find the book in my local library, I might settle for a World Wide Web search for "children AND gardens".

And so for day 659
02.10.2008