On how it sometimes is

Here. Here in our communities where we sit nestled or some would say slammed, jumbled, forced here in the green of the Gatineau Hills you can sometimes early in the morning maybe, or maybe at twilight or maybe when forced to stillness by universal dictate catch the green-ness breathing. It is sometimes a smoky mist upon the river or in the catch of breeze rustling sun speckled leaves or in the ponderous silence between breaths heavy with humidity. This “Being”, this greenness born of an infinite Will answers to a time where there is no time. It knows that the noise that scratches at its skin is not anything but passing. It knows no importance of itself. It just exists where clocks do not.

North of where I live here, in Masham a woman tends her garden. As long as I have known her, she has tended her garden. And in the summer she sometimes arrives with ripe tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans in a basket to share. A humble offering. A pride. A simple thing. Her garden has always been. And when people are crazed by the world and the noise and the pain and mostly the fear and they might ask me what to do I always tell them to put in a garden if they can. Tend a garden. Put your hands in the naked dirt and catch the promise of the green-ness breathing.

Last week my friend called to say she had lost her cucumber plants. For it is going to be one of “those” spring summers we know well: We swelter in the heat and yet at night in the green-ness there is a killing frost. The seedlings she had nurtured would not see their promise. Where some would be angry, and some would despair, and some would be frustrated, my friend gathered up more seeds and planted yet again. Because that is how it is. You do what needs to be done.  For those who live with hands that have long caressed and coaxed and loved the sacred green-ness, a killing frost is just a killing frost.

Around me here, the world is testing many. And there is much fear. And hermit as I am, I watch the scramble and sometimes cry.  We are all each other’s children. So I beg them to be kind not knowing if they know what kindness is anymore. Kindness sometimes is a basket of fresh-grown tomatoes. So I tell them when I can, when I myself can find a stillness of spirit that does not cater to myself and my own fears but to we the children: Plant a garden if you can. And if you can’t plant a garden, plant a pot of red peppers. Some would say I can’t plant a garden because I don’t know if I’ll be living here long and I say plant a garden anyway—for those that would come after.

Many around me I see have planted gardens. I pass them sometimes when I have ventured out. I know so many who have planted gardens because it is a practical thing to do. It is also born of fear. “My God,” they think, “there is a famine and inflation and the supply chain might not be there I have to put up stores and I have to prepare!” Some have planted gardens because well, that’s the trendy thing to do and they don’t want to be unlike the other. Some have planted the gardens with a competitive spirit for what type of seed or how carefully plotted it all is.  I smile then. I do not care why they have planted a garden. Because I know that what they have planted may have been born in fear or pride or competition but will grow in wisdom. And if they can listen, and what choice can they possibly have?, they will hear the green-ness breathing; not the scratching scrabble of the world. And if a killing frost comes yet again, or whatever it may be, whatever reason that they might have for planting, they will still know hope where hope never was. It is always there. They will know a tending and a watching and an insistent toil to the harvest. For that is all it is.

To every life there will come a killing frost. Sometimes you plant again and sometimes it comes again. Or it is something else—a hungry grub, a bitter sun, a grazing deer, a scratching and a scrabble. Now we can rage, or we can cry, or we can go out and plant again. Sometimes it is too late to plant and all that we expected is not going to come. So we plan next year’s garden. And we see how that will grow.

If you don’t know what to do right now. If everything you believed and knew and worked for, seems in shambles, love the one you are with and tend your garden. And get a chicken if you can. They have things to teach us too I imagine. Do what needs to be done. Take care of your family, yourself, your neighbour and your community. There is nothing else right now.