“I don’t suppose it’s revealing too much to say that when I got home, I found that someone had made this sign for me and stuck it prominently into the muddy lawn. I was almost to the house when suddenly I caught sight of it, trudging along dragging myself & an armload from the truck. Clutching myself, & stuff, I stopped to marvel at it’s joy, & familiarity. Who was it ... my grandfather? Who’d fashioned signs using stencils, in a similar utility green & white? He was surely chuckling, in heaven. Always the prankster, with a rascally glint in his eye as he laughed at his own jokes, gray stubble of a goatee bobbing, spittle collecting as he prepared to admit to his mischief in heavily accented English, saying “You no t’in” which was his version of how we all use the word “like”. Sporting sometimes a beret or often a fez, his Greek dancing to my Italian grandmother’s virtuosic accordion playing, well ... you can only imagine how epic it all was. In the community center of the trailer park, next to the lagoon with alligators, after the pot luck and coffee hour, he and she who loved & lived to perform. But back to the mysterious sign painter, so recently, & secretly, having fled my yard. Knowing, vaguely I’m sure, when I would not be there. Using stealth, to deliver a message of kindness & humor, surely poking fun at my larger-than-life ambitions. Totally right, of course, that I’m reliably too big for my britches. There has been less time for woods rambling, lately. And all the rain, not letting up for as long as a day, either soaking me, or cooling me, or uprooting my plans hatched in dryness. One knee in mud, thrusting lobelia into a wet hole, I can only be thankful for the type of jobs I’m hired to do. Last Friday at Kristin’s, tasked with digging plants for Carolyn, helicoptered in by fate to see yet another hidden corner of Vermont, where humble people have been steadfastly improving their land, and painting with plants. Plants I’ve never seen before, plants I’ve never seen thriving in these conditions, plants let loose & then loved with restraint, as shovels continued to ply the soil. Sometimes, for decades, then decades more. I’d gladly donate a decade, if writing a book in honor of all the hidden cottage landscape gardeners of Vermont was remotely possible. I saw such a one today, as I killed time at Gardener’s Supply in Burlington, and she saw me. Even without direct eye contact, there is a mutual respect that flows, between the elderly private gardeners and the professionals. I had an hour; I thought I’d peruse the bargain bin for shrubs, and study things I didn’t recognize. Then catch a bite of lunch, having skipped breakfast. Mid-day it’s quiet, on a weekday, at the nursery. She was lovely, a slow shopper, a discerning buyer, with only one plant on her cart, then later, three. The lines in her face, similar to mine, were a little deeper, and her gait, slightly more deliberate, next to my erratic hobbling on injured limbs; a falsely forceful stride adopted to override pain. You know, and are habituated to it, that you have to go to work. You work to survive. You work out of love also, because no one would do this professionally, who didn’t have it in their bones. My octogenarian friend made tasteful selections I glanced at approvingly, from a long ways away. Whereas my deep inspection of willows, and exotics, and amber Nine Bark, resulted in nothing. Fearing the loss of money, considering the possibility that I could spin a sale price off someone I know who runs another nursery, I held back from buying anything. The maple squash soup, and bread, tho they had no butter, was everything I needed. I ate quickly. I’m a bit of an animal, now. I do things that are extremely practical, most of the day. It would take a lot to penetrate my practicality. No one will ever, ever again, get me to jump through hoops, for some romantic dream. That was all, so stupid.”
