It has been an uncertain spring. What with criminally delusional Tzar wannabes, record hot temperatures and the hallucinatory visions of encroaching droughts hand in hand with floods threatening of much worse to come, every new shoot in the garden, any breath of not scorching breeze and every new timid flower seem like veritable miracles, tentative dream projects to absorb in the moment, hold close to the heart and marvel at its very tenuous existence while it transited through ours.

 

Wanda and I have sought refuge in the new North Garden project, on the north side of the backyard, by the bedrooms’ windows side of the house. This side of the house had been since forever neglected and ignored, only recently opened up after becoming more accessible with the overall redesign of the backyard and the rock paving of the trail taking from the porch and the 10th avenue gate and around the house to the 6th street gate. Actually the ‘North Garden’ is the name of the project, soon to be renamed Bea’s Garden, the name that our grandkids gave Wanda. And it is truly her garden, I am an excited hired hand.

 

The garden has come a long way, a very long way, after long days of hard sometimes back breaking work which became more challenging and exhausting as the temperature kept creeping up as we moved towards summer. We have drilled old ceramic kitchen pots into beautiful and whimsical plant pots, bought plants and reproduced others from cuttings (I think that’s a lot more fun…) and received plant gifts from appreciating friends. The high point of this re-population was the gift from Jeff of a giant Cardboard Palm, (a real living fossil of a plant that probably has been around for millions of years) and the bamboo that we planted by the back fence, near the corner with Josh and Steve’s backyards.

 

Now, we have not abandoned the south side, by the porch and the 10th avenue gate, with the bird of paradise, the ‘dracaena fragans’ we rescued from Emiliano’s back when we closed down the restaurant (honestly, I am not trying to sound hootie tootie, I have not found a regular popular name for this plant, just that the ‘corn plant’ name for it that I found sounds misleading to me…), some new fancy ferns (that have not grown too much yet…), and the bromeliads that Minerva helped us plant last year (those really took off!). But the North Garden, consciously or not, was an exhausting and exhilarating working meditation where ambition turned into surrender, the focus on the sweaty and demanding physical work out turning into a sort of transcendental state of consciousness where we never saw when we had gone too painfully far, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, until it was too late and we were ready for a shower and just collapse for a nap. A shield and balsam to the uncertain future drifting in every morning via the newspaper, the internet and the friends’ comments. An exercise of hope.

 

By now, the garden is sumptuous and exuberant and our work has wound down significantly with the arrival of this summer’s extreme heat and the season’s mosquito swarm. We do take the opportunity to now stroll and marvel at how it has taken from where we took it to the current explosion of really green lust and to stop and admire the little daily miracles, like the first time our turmeric has flowered, this being its second year, a survivor of last year’s winter. And water the plants, the rains are late this year. What else is new? I hope it is not the first sign of a draught. In Florida. That would be alarmingly ironic. But being under a uneven tree canopy, it does take partial sun while not getting to dry. I think once it takes, it will pretty much take care of itself in that respect.

 

The front yard, well that is a different story, a no man’s land. Everything we have tried to plant out front (and Wanda can be very insistently stubborn…) has shriveled and burned down under the murderous afternoon sun (our house faces west). No use. Except: do you remember our Ficus Persevericus, the fig tree that refused to die? Out of just sheer will power. Well, that was this year’s surprising star.

 

Over the last couple of years, it has produced some wimpy little figs, and just a hand full at that each year. We have always celebrated them and Wanda even talk to the little dude (not so little no more!) encouraging it with words of admiration for the couple of figs. Well, this year that little dude exploded into a thick exuberant foliage and then took off putting out so much fruit that we just could not keep up with it. But it gave us the opportunity to rather bountifully share with the two kids next door and Becky and Gwen across the street before they would go bad. And still they kept coming. I have no idea what got into that tree this year but, man, did we stuff our mouth.

 

At some point it will stop, I know, and then the rains (if they ever come) will probably mess with the darn fungus the poor guy develops with too much rain, but we will help it recover, and then will go dormant till next year. And so will these two old gardeners for the moment, until the colder weather will rid us of the mosquitos and we will again be able to sit by the North Garden with our mid-afternoon coffee or glass of Pinot Grigio to feel the afternoon die into cool fall and winter evenings.

 

One can always hope…