The Garden We Won't Leave Behind
By Melissa Reeser Poulin
@melissa_r_poulin
I’m looking forward to the peonies. Romantic and fragrant, they’ll be a nod toward pure beauty and pleasure for a gardener who has always focused on the hardy and practical: potatoes, sturdy greens, mint and chamomile for tea. Peonies are different. More than a survival crop, they symbolize loftier goals: loyalty, wealth, a happy life, a happy marriage. Though the petals are edible, I've always thought of them as decorative—a category of plant I haven’t been able to afford yet, but might some day.
All of my gardens have been short-term and scraped together. I grew radishes and peas in pots on the porch of my first home, in the university trailer park where my husband and I met at age 20. After college, I lived in borrowed rooms while I trained as an apprentice on organic farms, and started a garden in an abandoned plot at my local church. When the harvest ended, I left behind a stand of lemon verbena nurtured from cuttings, alongside budding friendships with fellow gardeners and church members.
Newly engaged and eager for new surroundings, we packed our truck with my share of the season's squash and onions, and drove 15 hours north to the Pacific Northwest. Though we’d always planned to return to our home state of California one day, the rising costs and temperatures, and the growing threat of massive wildfires, eventually turned that dream to ash. Instead, we’ve spent over a decade growing to love the rain and the fern-softened forests of Oregon, shifting between countless poorly-insulated rentals, where we dug, tended, and left gardens over and over again.
Now, at last, we have our shot at our own home, with 60-year-old plants out back: wild roses, blueberry shrubs high as my head, an Italian plum with branches scraping the ground, and clusters of well-established peonies. They’re no longer blooming in August when we buy the home, but the sellers− a brother and sister who had grown up there in the 1960s− describe them with soft fondness, picturing their mother's large garden as it was when they were children.
Peonies are an investment plant. They take a while to get established, and might not bloom for the first few years. They like to be left alone, and hate to be transplanted: a shock to the roots is death to the plant. I’m looking forward to finally putting down roots, too. And yet to do that, we’ve got to make this last move.
For the fourth time in ten years, we’re about to be uprooted again, and it’s messy this time: I’m halfway through a difficult pregnancy, we have two children under five, and there’s a global pandemic. The house isn’t exactly move-in ready, either. Not much has been updated since it was built in 1957. The sewer needs to be completely redone, and the electrical panel, furnace, and appliances will need replacing soon. There’s original carpet and wallpaper to tear out inside, while outside an acre of ivy-riddled conifers, blackberry brambles, and deciduous saplings await our care.
Yet the move also promises to stitch us firmly into the vision we’ve always had for our family: a home with plenty of room to grow. A place of our own with a big garden, chickens, bees, and fruit trees. A swing hanging from the stout limb of a Norway maple. Damp, wild corners where mushrooms can proliferate and children can bake mud pies.
This is it, at last. A big leap coinciding with the unexpected arrival of both the novel coronavirus and an unplanned pregnancy. It feels risky to make the move now, but something about the total upheaval of the past five months also makes the move seem logical. Everything has changed, mostly for the worse. Why not change something for the better?
We decide the size of the yard and the scale of work warrants professional help. A thick band of rhododendrons, unfamiliar shrubs, and ferns encircles the entire house, blocking much of the sunlight from its small mid-century windows, set high for privacy. A hedge of juniper divides the yard unnaturally in two, and most of the conifers haven't been limbed in decades. So while my husband and I have always had a thrifty, DIY ethic when it comes to gardening, we know when we’re in over our heads. We hire a local landscaper and crew to clear and haul the overgrowth while we focus on repairs inside. In under a week, they’ve cleared a massive pile of tree limbs, roots, and debris.
Yet despite our best efforts to communicate which plants to keep, the peonies are pulled out, too. I almost cry when I see the bare earth under the neatly-pruned roses. Now I will never get to see the thick clusters of pink blossoms the previous owners described. A wave of guilt washes over me. We’ve barely unpacked the first boxes, and we’ve already been careless with this home that has been so loved and cherished before us. Those peonies had old souls, had lived as long as one family’s entire story, and we neglected to honor both. But I am too exhausted to ruminate for long—and too overwhelmed by gratitude at the sight of my children running barefoot through the big, grassy yard I’ve always wanted for them.
My husband and I pace off a large section of the yard that gets the most sun, taking the familiar steps toward planting a new vegetable garden, a process that has become almost second nature. First, we flatten out moving boxes and gather more cardboard from neighbors and dumpsters. Then, we haul in truckloads of manure from farms and fuel suppliers. Layer in masses of straw. Top it with finished compost and another layer of straw, and let it all sit—a steaming lasagna of organic matter—through the heavy rains of winter and spring. When the temperatures rise again, the grass will have been smothered and the earthworms will have done the work of tilling everything into rich soil, ripe for planting vegetables, herbs, and native plants. We've done it so many times, left behind so many well-loved gardens, entrusting them to the hands of new tenants, new owners.
This time, we hope, we'll be staying.
It's fall by the time the dust settles. Inside, we've uncovered and polished beautiful hardwood floors. Outside, we've put the last bolt in the kids' play set. And somewhere less easily-placed, inside our own bodies, our spirits have come to understand that this is home. Gradually I stop fumbling with the strange set of older house keys. I sleep through unfamiliar night noises. We hang our paintings and prints, and cook real meals in the kitchen instead of heating up take-out. Slowly, we begin to feel like we belong.
Fall is the best time to plant peonies. Come autumn, they've entered dormancy and can begin sending their life force into the root ball that will nourish the heads of a thousand bright petals for which they're known. One afternoon we head to the nursery to choose a few young plants—Petite Renees, and a 1906 variety of pink, lightly scented blooms called Sarah Bernhardt. We plant them in a new spot, clustered under the front windows where they will get just the right amount of sun.
It will take some time to get established, but peonies are known for longevity. Some plants may grow for over a century. There has been shock and loss and upheaval this year. On the heels of our move, we've only just emerged from a week of thick smoke from unprecedented wildfires. Climate change has found us after all, here in the cooler north. For a few sickening days, we wondered if we'd lose the house we'd only just purchased.
Now, in the quiet of recent rain, we sink our hands gratefully into damp soil. Gently, we nestle the peonies into the earth, spacing them wide and banking them lightly. Without speaking, without the need to speak, we settle into the familiar rhythm of working together. I breathe in the rich scent of good mulch and give each plant a satisfying serving while he waters them in. When we finish, we step back to look at our work, lacing our fingers together like roots.
We don't know what next summer will bring. Will there be a vaccine by then, a new president? Will there be more fires, and a firm commitment to confront the climate instability that is their cause? Will the peonies bloom?
Guest essay written by Melissa Reeser Poulin. Melissa’s poems and essays have appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Entropy, Hip Mama, Relief Journal, Ruminate Magazine, The Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, and Water~Stone Review, among other publications. She is the author of a chapbook of poems, Rupture, Light (2019), and co-editor of the anthology Winged: New Writing on Bees (2014). She lives in Oregon with her husband and three children. More at https://melissareeserpoulin.com/
Photo by Lottie Caiella.