White flowers on frostproof gardenia emit an aroma known the world over.
White flowers on frostproof gardenia emit an aroma known the world over.
While I was planting a gardenia this month, my shovel struck a stray brick from an old patio that was done away with long before we moved in. In the 25 years we’ve lived at our house, I’ve pried dozens of bricks from the backyard, stacking them near the fence for some second use I have yet to decide. At this point, I probably have enough to build a small chimney.
Our house was built in 1950 — not ancient, but old enough to make gardening a routine exercise in archaeology. A glint in one of our flowerbeds the other day turned out to be a small black marble that hadn’t lost its shine. Maybe the marble belonged to my son, now in college, or one of several little boys who lived here before we did. In turning dirt for some new plant or shrub, I inevitably turn up the past.
Pleasantly haunted by the relics of distant seasons, I occasionally wonder what I’m leaving behind as I putter around the lawn or tend petunias and gingers on bended knee in one of the beds that ring our house. I imagine some future gardener will find a trowel or two, and maybe some pruning shears long rusted since the day they dropped from my pocket. Sometimes, while trimming the azaleas, I’ve stumbled upon one of my limb saws or a ragged glove in the leaf litter, casualties of some careless hour when I was summoned inside for afternoon coffee and failed to collect all my gear.
What I mostly hope to leave for future householders is a better garden than the one I found — or at least the foundation for one. I’ve been thinking about this a good bit after reading “In Kiltumper,” a book by Niall Williams and Christine Breen about the couple’s garden in rural Ireland. Williams writes about embracing Kentucky author Wendell Berry’s idea that the measure of a good life might be adding an inch of topsoil to whatever ground you were living on.
It's a noble goal — and a humbling one, too, as I’m reminded each year while poking around in various plots around our yard. While digging a small hole for the gardenia, I noted with pleasure the rich, dark earth my spade had brought to the surface, each scoop alive with earthworms wriggling in the sunlight. That kind of bounty is a dividend, I suppose, from years of tipping wheelbarrows of compost into flowerbeds to nourish new roots.
Other moments tell me how much work is left to do. While planting a new hydrangea in the front yard, I sliced open the ground with my shovel and found the gummy red clay that’s typical of what we walk on each day in south Louisiana.
Williams writes of making soil improvement one of his New Year’s resolutions. I just might make it one of my own.
Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.
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