The Melting World

Out back of our dilapidated public housing is an unkempt field of beauty. A sturdy pine tree, in its classic Christmas shape, stands near to where a house used to be long ago. Dragon willow trees spring and curl up tenaciously even though the city workers mow them down, and now patches of daffodils and a few single ruby red tulips grow among the tall grasses along with wild asparagus, small purple flowered ground cover, and dandelions.

This year I decided I would create a miniature garden, although no one else in our building has done so, and I would do it without asking for anyone’s permission. Boldness comes to those who have little time left on their contracts, I suppose. I pulled a heavy sack of soil around back, purchased a mini shovel and scoop, and planted three marigolds and one tomato plant in the middle of all that wild life. My husband helped me get up the toughest weeds until we created a small guerilla garden. The plants are loving their new home, and already a small yellow flower has bloomed on the tomato plant. I put up some wooden fencing so that the city mowers might take heart and not murder them with their electric weed-whackers, as they invade the field and slice up the other vegetation twice a year.

I am not sure they will show deference in their work, as they have previously hacked up my son’s Thomas the Tank Engine he had dropped over the veranda last year. But for now, I will believe in the basic goodness of humans, and I think they will understand the very human desire to bite into a juicy sun-ripened tomato, so much more pleasurable than those mass produced types grown by unknown people in unknown places.