So, it happened at the close of a very hot last day of June, that I found myself surveying the garden dedicated to my parents, lovingly known as Mom and Dad’s garden.  The back of the garden is lined by a white picket fence that separates our yard from the neighbors.  A thick belt of irises run right up against the fence Louisiana in June and July, and several adjoining months on both sides of this duo, are known for being quite literally sweltering.  High humidity and high temperatures serve to coat the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface with the effect of a forever moistened hot towel.  It’s simply a fact of life here.  There are outliers of course, but one can more or less predict that there will be nine months of solid heat with a crescendo in the summer middle months.

The effect of this also brings about many rain and thunder storms when the atmosphere’s particles become charged in such a way that there must be a disruption – many times this takes the form of a thunderous and quite calamitous downpour.  In all this, there are many of us who still engage in gardening despite the seemingly unfavorable conditions.  On hot days without rain, a sprinkle of water from the hose just at sunset can become a welcome relief to the green and blooming growing things that must stand in the heat all day and hope for whatever shade may or may not come to them dependent upon larger growing things close by or a jutting house frame that periodically blocks the sun’s rays.

Note that I used the word “growing” in the prior paragraph.  Several weeks of heat/rain patterning in this way can account for much growth, in many different fashions.  Sometimes it is the intentional (from the gardener’s perspective) growth that happens with the annuals and perennials that have been tended.  And, of course, it also involves an extreme growth of what we call “weeds,”  that in the South can take the form of wild blackberry vines, small pecan trees and other “volunteer” beings resulting from the wind-borne or butterfly-borne pollen and sometimes even bird droppings.

and, moving toward the yard and the front of the garden, there are a plethora of living struggling beings with roots or tubers of different sizes and depths: variegated canna lilies, a grapefruit tree, camelia bushes, roses, ginger, vitex, star jasmine, elephant ears, other lilies of various species, a sweet olive, volunteer mimosas, boxwood and then the actual “intentional” front garden space, which is comprised of an odd assortment of annuals and perennials.  

There is a special inverted tire planter, which belonged to my brother on one side of the garden and a large wooden cross built by my Dad on the other side of the garden.

All of the garden is guarded by a 21 year old Sentinel Mimosa that casts some amount of shade and contributes to those mimosa sproutlings that appear in the garden from time to time.  The garden is designed in a kidney shape that surrounds a large fountain that belonged to my Dad and now serves as the centerpiece of the landscaping in that part of the front yard.

As I looked out at the overgrown garden just described, I saw a tyranny of blackberry vines generously endowed with shaggy spined briar tendrils that covered the irises and provided a sort of netting over most of the back part of the garden.  There were also small and some large pecan trees that arrived from somewhere unknown.  Also dotted through the back of the garden lining the white picket fence – much in disrepair – were several elephant ear plants along with four o’clocks.  The ginger running midway through the garden, which served to separate the wild back layer from the annual/perennial front, had managed to grow into everything.  

Taking all of this in visually, I just started moving.  First, I found gloves and shears and then descended into the irises from the side of the garden closest to the house.  I hated stepping on the irises, but there was really no other way to begin to tackle the overgrowth, that, in my judgement, at that moment, must be undertaken.  There was no plan for this, it just seemed to be spontaneous, neither an act of exasperation nor an intentional effort to bring a supposed return to order.  It just seemed to be something that needed to be done.

I reached down as low to the ground as I could to try to grab the roots of the blackberry vines, but many times the sea of Irises would not allow me to see and so I had to resort to simply and painfully feeling down the stem, with the result of accumulating many of the spines on my arms and a few piercing even the gloves.  Still I continued.  

Even though the sun was dropping low in the sky, the humidity was teeming and needless to say perspiration was intense.  As I continued to pull up the spiny vines, as well as thinning out rogue canna lilies, elephant ears and ginger, I glanced at the skin on my arms.  There were blood droplets all over my arms.  In some spots where the sweat had mixed with the blood, there were some rather interesting red tattoos forming.  The stinging was more curious than painful, and I felt even sanguine and indeed driven.  

I was driven in the sense that I really was not feeling any particular personal direction with this endeavor.  It was as if something else was moving me.  Not something impersonal though.  More like a force that somehow welcomed my cooperation.

I began to notice many things.  For example, where the ginger and the irises had imposed upon the sweet olive, the roses and the camelias, there was an atrophied shape resulting from the crowding of these plants.  I was also surprised to find some plants had been completely covered over.  Ah…there’s that planter pot I was wondering about – completely invisible and unnoticed until now.  The grasping of the star jasmine on the vitex in the center of the garden was almost exquisite if it hadn’t resembled such a shocking choking gesture.  The jasmine had weaved itself into a mat that rested upon the vitex that was so desperately trying to bloom.

And then there was the path that I subconsciously formed as I treaded through the irises against the fence that stretched from the front yard to the street in front of the house.  As I “cleared” this “path,” I was very much aware of the imposition and, yes, even a type of violence, in creating this path.  The large long thorns of the grapefruit tree painfully reminded me of this when I pierced my finger on a severed old grapefruit branch with long pointed thorns.  

Yet, this all seemed to have a validity.  The bruised and broken bloomed-out irises that allowed the passage for clearing seemed to have a sad smile of a service done.  The one-pointedness of the hidden dead grapefruit thorn was precise in its effect – the sharpness of what one does not see.  There is a mysterious clarity in wholeness that I dare not offer an attempted explanation.

The sheer volume of the green bodies being pulled from the garden was amazing.  A collapsible deep wagon was filled twice to the top, and then there were the trips to the garbage with cuttings too big to fit on the wagon.  What had once grown together now uprooted and ready for recycling.

Every now and then during the over two hour foray into this garden “tending,” I would walk away from the garden to view it from different angles.  First, I noticed just how much of the environment behind the garden – that had been hidden – was now visible.  One striking eyeshot of the garden revealed the beautiful glow of the setting sun on the tired smooth bark of the  ancient towering magnolia in the neighbors yard that now could be seen THROUGH the garden.

Sometimes these “step back” views afforded seeing both more “grooming” that may be needed to allow space for a visible suffering one, or sometimes making space for one formerly invisible that now could see and feel the light.  I had feelings of amazement in terms of resilience and the way that a determined living being can maneuver and shapeshift to get to the light.  And there was much patience all around here – in the soil, in the foliage, even in my hands.  There was a silent communion, so to speak. Somehow, a confluence of what needed to happen or perhaps, just COULD happen… right now.  

I found myself thanking the uprooted beings as I placed them in the wagon.  It all seemed to be a piece of a Whole.  The overgrowth was necessary in order to work, just work – from the perspective of the plants and flowers, and from the perspective of the silly gardener.  No malice, but an understanding of cycle and circle and “suchness.”  If there was any sense of satisfaction, it could only lie within the gratitude of all this coming together and the possibility to see, really see, all the tendrils of obfuscation and clarity that play with each other all the time.  

Can a garden be a soul?

There is a silliness, which can allow JOY to arise, just for being noticed, and there is good work that can always be done.  Actually, it’s already always going on, but sometimes when my head can drop down into my hands and feet, a feeling can rise from the earth, whose roots are endlessly deep within the Cosmos!