First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
I’ve always wanted to be a garden person, the kind of person who sits in an Adirondack chair, amid manicured flowers and pots of flowing foliage, sipping homemade French press coffee at sunrise; the kind of person who enjoys a slow dinner in the same chair, a glass of pinot gris on a bistro table; the kind of person who, an hour later, enjoys an evening espresso, lost in the colours of the sunset. I’ve always wanted to be that person.
Except, I don’t drink wine. And I buy my coffee daily.
My uncle and aunt are garden people. Their backyard is set up as a mini Versailles. Water trickles from a cherub’s mouth; rosemary grows in terra cotta pots; daisies, marigolds and hostas fill weed-free plots of earth. Here, they enjoy breakfast brioche and espresso, lunchtime burrata and arugula salad, and suppertime rosemary chicken and fire-roasted cherry tomatoes.
My parents are garden people, too, although of a different variety. Mum revels in spotting and plucking intrusive weeds, trims climbing wisteria even as her neck grows sore and waters her artist-palette flower plots well after dusk. Dad prepares his soil, turning it over and over, readying it for tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and zucchini. The bulk, if not all, of their time outside is spent actually gardening.
I’ve tried to follow their leads. When I first moved into my home 12 years ago, I planted marigolds, tomatoes and oregano. I watered and weeded. I bought an Adirondack chair. (Sure, it was a plastic one from Canadian Tire, but I didn’t have enough faith in my garden-person potential to spend $199 on a wooden one.) I swept away leaves and dirt to make my surroundings as pleasant as possible.
I sat in the Adirondack chair in the morning, with my French press coffee; in the evening, with a tomato and oregano salad; at dusk, with my espresso. I did these things. And I got bored. After the initial stepping out into the garden, sitting down, eating and drinking, what was there left to do?
I grew frustrated with myself. Here I was, privileged enough to have a bit of garden in the heart of the city and I couldn’t sit in it and enjoy it. To make my situation more shameful, this bit of garden, largely planted and manicured by my retired parents, was home to a grapevine that provided shelter from the sun, an apple espalier, a blackberry bush and planters that draped with sweet potato vine and blossomed with begonias and ornamental grasses. To make matters worse, I am a schoolteacher and have two summer months to soak up these beautiful surroundings.
Seasons came and went and I did not attempt even one garden sit. What’s the point, I thought. The stoicism of garden people just wasn’t in me. Instead, I plopped myself in front of the television during my down time, even when the neighbourhood was still and the colours in the dusk sky were a blend of brilliant red, soft orange and yellow. I kept telling myself not to feel guilty for being indoors. Being indoors meant no bugs, no cobwebs and WiFi entertainment.
But while the seasons came and went, the guilt stayed, as did my desire to be a garden person. Surely, there must be something that I was not seeing, not appreciating. And the only way to discover what I was missing was to go back out.
So, last summer I tried again in earnest. I lugged my Adirondack chair from its basement home to the backyard. I swept away fallen leaves. I watered plants. I cut back the grapevine and blackberry bush. Everything was primed and pretty should I have wanted to make use of that space.
And, on one particularly hot day, I thought, yes, now I will sit in my garden.
So, I sat. And I was shocked.
For the first time, I found a serenity amid the greenery and sounds of the outdoors. This peace seemed to reset my mind in a way that the indoors did not. Inside, I might feel unsettled and anxious. Outside, I sat, I listened and I breathed without distraction. And bits of stress – but not all – lifted.
I sketched a meditating frog that sat between two planters.
I read.
I observed the slow ripening of grapes and blackberries and apples.
I sat in silence – silence, except for the muffled sound of an occasional airplane and the rustle of leaves as the wind blew through them.
Two seasons have passed and spring has nicely settled in. Admittedly, the long, dark winter nights of the fall and winter months have diminished some of my garden-person gains; as I return home from my daily walk, I clutch my house key, eager to retreat indoors. But today, I pause. I pause and I notice. A purple crocus blooms in the middle of the lawn. Two apple blossoms flower on the espalier. One red tulip dares to be the first amongst its peers to show itself to the world. Huh, I think as I turn the key, my garden just might grow on me yet.
Tina Tinaburri lives in Vancouver.