Beng and I have started tossing newly-learnt plant names around as light insults. You Little Ironweed. You False Heather!
Plants in Flamingo Valley: Pagoda flower. Kusamaki. Spider Plant. Moses in the Cradle. Trailing Daisy. Mexican Plumeria. Mexican Ruellia.
The rain tree, also the monkey pod tree, is native to Central and South America. The angsana tree is the national tree of the Philippines.
Learning the environment around me might have started out trying to learn ‘locality’, but realizing ‘locality’ is, in effect, transplanted foreigners, all living and adapting to alien soil.
Inexplicably, I decided to start work on the overgrown garden, which sat abandoned for years when no one lived in Limau Purut. "So sorry we didn't take care of the garden when we moved in," our uncle said ruefully. "None of us have green thumbs."
I found Mei’s ratty old gardening gloves and started picking up the garden pebbles, putting them into a pail, one by one.
Two hours passed.
Later, I ordered new gloves, a hoe, garden shears, and a weeding tool.
I am clearing weeds, pulling up grass, amassing pebbles. Mei poked her head out the window, “Jie you look like you’re having fun.” “I feel like a small child at the beach,” I replied. Unearth, turn over, organize. Something about working with soil, dirt.
My mind has been filled with soil, plants, pebbles, and worms. Images of fecundity and death. Stepping outside social life and into a kind of temporality dictated by the small, the weather, and the environment.
I have no idea what I’m doing. How joyful.
"Do you know what kind of people garden?" X asked, finger raised for rhetorical emphasis. "Boring ones!"
A few nights ago, I dreamt of soil. Sifting through soil. Soil moving. Moist soil. "POV of worm?" I jotted down, then laughed. Life has become so strange.
“Gardening? You??” Our grandma exclaimed, incredulous. Later, she does an about-face and is pleased. “Good, you’re learning something,” she approved.
The forces that propel us are so mysterious. Since starting work on it, I have gardened every day. I dream about soil, I weed, I scroll through plant websites. In moments of idleness, my mind makes plans to repot, explores what kind of plants I’d like to grow, thinks of leaves and my hands in the earth. And I wonder: just where did this enthusiasm come from? I get dirty, sweaty, my arms and back ache. Heaven knows it’s terrible for my skin; soil teems with microbes. For a while, I wore a face mask and face shield while gardening, determined not to get dirt on my face. It was hot and uncomfortable. Our neighbor gave me an incredulous look from across the fence, gesturing to his face, why?? I gave up after a week, resigned to earth on my cheeks.
The succulents that graced our apartment in Boston died quick, boring little deaths. So, why? An inner imperative instructs me, “Save this plant. Repot it. Trim the leaves. Pick up the stones. Prune. Uproot. Water. Sweep. Dig. Save. Discard.” And I obey with delight. My hands move by faith, some sort of secret animal intuition. Gardening encourages a sharpening of perspective— I examine leaves for mites, I see a millipede emerge from soil. My breath slows down, the earth fills up time by taking me out of it. And I realize it’s not dissimilar to when I am in the flow, writing; the inexplicable knowing—yes, this word sounds better than that, the syntax should vary here, this part should be cut, the cadence here is off— And I re-read Nina MacLaughlin: "It is enough sometimes to listen. To let the sound sink into our souls, to be moved without understanding how. Sometimes we don't need to comprehend the structure, the great composer's guidance of the noise. At dawn, it is enough to hear one bird half the silence. Dawn's rosy fingers beckon and conduct. She spreads her hands and the birds know: start tuning, the concert begins again. What good does it do, knowing why, or how?"
“Shall we get a professional to do this?” Beng queries, looking down at me grunting, trying to yank out a heliconia rhizome.
I refuse. I want to do it myself; it is the work that calls out to me, the care. I like having this plot of land be mine, I like working on it every day. I enjoy the labor, carrying things to and fro, digging, forever digging. I enter a deeper sense of time, time that has slowed down. I find that I am not anxious about anything, that my focus is solely on the next step, and the next, and the next... Overthinking and catastrophizing have no place here.
There’s something so sobering about lowering myself to the ground. Humility comes from humilis: Latin for low, of the earth. Lately, I have been trying to get my writing down to telling its truth, my truth. Working with soil, leaves, root systems; nature is nothing but truth.
I am learning about my environment, the needs and flows of each plant. I like that I am quietly forced to be patient, to be content with the little that I work on the garden each day. I told Beng that gardening is like “an analogy for writing the dissertation,” told Mei, “no matter my word count for today, working with the earth reminds me I am laying a foundation.”
But it's more than that. The luminous Jenny Odell discovers, “It turns out that groundedness requires actual ground.” And ecologist David Abram instructs: “...only in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and navigate the multiple dimensions that now claim us.”
The palm trees have been here for over twenty years. Gifted to our parents by Uncle K, an unpleasant man we all dislike, they are now half-dead, and press into the fence separating us from the neighbors.
I've been trying to uproot the tiniest baby palm. Its roots are longer and more spread-out than expected. It’s frustrating; something so small has roots that go so deep, and have such subterranean stretch. Digging through the hard clay soil, unearthing more and more roots, back aching, thighs burning... I kept thinking that this has to be a metaphor for something, that there was no way this labor I was undertaking could be symbolically vacant. Things unseen that have roots that go wide and deep. Trying to displace something that just won't budge. An analogy for living with depression? My dissertation? I tug. Pull. Dig. It has to mean something.
"It means, " Mei huffed behind her face mask, exasperated, "that Uncle K gave you depression." We snigger, yanking the market trolley up a curb.
T offered to help out. I have an adorable photo of her in the garden, with a cap on, holding up a gaudy orange hoe, smiling brightly. We moved and shifted soil I dampened the night before, and went through the laborious and thankless task of pulling up rhizome after trailing rhizome.
“I feel like this means something important,” she mused, wrist-deep in earth.
“Right???” The strange compulsion to view all acts in the garden as metaphors, abstract substitutions for something profound. “This makes me feel weird,” she said, looking at a rhizome she had yanked out. “These look like tumors.” A reminder of the things that haunt her.
We dug and yanked these starchy rootstalks, reminders of a familial history left untended, this savage pruning a tender kind of revivification, some sort of healthier relationship to the house— what shall I plant here? How shall I make this space beautiful? This recent wild love— I wonder if T felt it too— that strange tender feeling of having our hands in the soil. Grounding, both figurative and literal.
Today, I am angry. Finally, after an hour of aggressive journaling and scrolling through tumblr, he finally replied, “I’m sorry! It just didn’t occur to me.” I research carnivorous plants, bitterly knowing the symbolism is heavy-handed.
It is raining, I am procrastinating on today’s work on the dissertation, and I want to work on my garden.
My garden. I have taken ownership of it. I now know that the soil is arid at the front, and well-aerated at the back. I know that the clay soil needs compost and has to be turned over. That the red palm is surviving on rotten wood alone. That there are mysterious clay pieces scattered in the dirt, shattered earthenware from decades ago, lost to time and neglect. That many of the heliconias are probably diseased, but that some may be saved.
“Have you thought of a design? English-garden style? Or Italian?” P asked. Stunned, I said my aim was "more along the lines of 'charmingly inept'."
There’s not much thought about landscaping, a considerable lack of finesse regarding design. But the effort, the life— it’s all mine. Today, the thought that gardening and painting have made me a better writer— in that they teach me quite determinedly to not think. Or rather, to get out of the narratives in my head.
I fret about plants that are doing poorly. I overwater, and they yellow and wilt. I am learning to put my finger into every pot. I use a disposable chopstick to aerate the soil, letting roots breathe, gifting them air, movement, reach.
I break apart the compacted soil and amend it with the dark, secretive compost. Secretive— why did this word come to me? The darkness of it, the obsidian— the fact that all of it is death and decayed organic matter, loamy midnight prize. I find it rewarding, doing the work to improve the ground beneath me, amending it, making amends, on my knees.
"You really love plants, " H said, smiling. "No actually I really love the house and the garden—" I tried to explain, but her eyes had already flitted away, bored.
I am learning the soil of my country and my home, am learning that it sticks together and hardens and I have to work to soften it. I am writing most days, and I don’t feel the crawling creeping guilt that threatens to drown me when I am too depressed to work. I live with my sister, can borrow her clothes. Quinn runs around the garden as I stick my hands into soil. There are people in our lives, people who drop off food and sit around the dining table with us playing games. My husband eats the cauliflower I roast. Our cat is always affronted and hungry.
Lately, as I prune and polish the dissertation chapter, the tender satisfaction, “This is my voice,” I tell myself quietly, content. This is my voice. These are my words. It sounds like me because I read them again and again, and work on them in the same way I tend to the plants in our garden. Letting them breathe, running a critical eye over the same thing, over and over. Pruning, turning it towards the sun, or shade, adding compost. I am almost done with this chapter, I am almost done pulling up the rhizomes in front of the trellis, readying the soil. Every day I will re-read my words, fortify myself with them. I created this. I made this. This sounds like me. This sounds like my truthfulness. My kind of clarity. My kind of ground. My kind of language.
I’ve been knocked down this week. Depression came. I slept, and brooded. Didn’t work. I let the days slip by. “I’m here if you need anything,” Mei says, with a faux-creepy smile, letting her fingers slowly disappear behind my bedroom door. Everything is horribly difficult. Eating. Maintaining eye contact with Quinn. I sleep. I wake up, and lie down again. “ure doing the best you can,” L texted. I stumble down the stairs, way past lunchtime. I go back to sleep. Beng enters the room and dozes next to me. I sleep and sleep. I haven’t written in days.
Then I awake, and the world has shifted back onto its axis. The intolerable heaviness that crawled up my back has eased. Life is once again bearable. I garden— the first time in five days. It has been raining every single morning. I tuck new plants into the soil: sweet prayer plant, terragon, white bird of paradise, mint, oregano. The soil is damp. The wet seeps into my gloves. A surprise: mushrooms have sprouted. The weeds shriek green when pulled up. I admire the peculiar, delightful coloring of the checkered hibiscus. I see little buds on the passiflora, emerging leaf blades; all promises— “wait and see”, “there are things to look forward to,” “time has not been wasted, only lived through.”
The tiny hopes that carry us on.