It's A Garden Party! -

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me

- large or small, inside or out -

I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~

How much longer will the garden stand fast against the coming winter?

The rain started early this year, which is a good thing, but the cold, wet winter that is forecast for this year could bring its own difficulties.

I'm happy to enjoy the continuing blooms as long as they last and deal any other issues as they make themselves known.

The Fact of the Garden

- Minnie Bruce Pratt

 

With this rain I am satisfied we will be together

in the spring. Seeds of water on my window glass,

transparent sprouts and rootlets. In your backyard

steady rain through the heavy dirt we dug in,

our shovels excavating some history of the tiny garden.

Our blades cut through the design of a previous digger:

rotting boards, rocks, earthworms big as young snakes;

a tarnished spoon, pink champagne foil from a party;

a palmful of blue feathers from a dead jay.

We dug and planted. We intend to have a history here

behind this rented house. Despite the owner there is a secret

between us and the ground. In the wet dirt, our fleshy bulbs

and the pink cloves of garlic are making nests of roots.

The fact of the garden has satisfied me all morning:

that we worked side by side, your name round

when I spoke it: that my fingers worked in the dirt like rain,

the ground like a made bed with its mulch of leaves,

orderly, full of possibilities, acts of love

not yet performed.

Now the water’s slap on my window

has made me think of something else, suddenly,

what I don’t want to, the way I wake up in the night,

think I’ve heard a gun shot.

The memory, news story

you told me a week ago: the farmers south,

far south, El Salvador, afraid to go into their fields.

What does their dirt look like? I don’t know.

Instead I see that some thing is being planted:

U.S. soldiers watching as others bury a dead

hand, arm, head, torso.

To be afraid

to put your hand into the dirt. To be afraid to go

look at your ground: that it has been cut like skin,

will bulge out like cut muscle: that on a fair day

there will be subterranean thunder, then a loud, continuous

hiss of blood.

I wish I could see only the flowering

bulbs voluptuous in the spring.

But what is planted is

what comes. In the fall, plant stones: in the winter,

the ground gapes with stones like teeth.

I hold to the plan we thought of: small: full of

possibilities against despair:

us handing out

sheets of paper, thousands, the list of crimes:

sharp thin papers delving up something in people

in parking lots, shopping malls.

What will come of this?

Perhaps people to stand with us outside the buildings,

to say again: Not in my name. Words adamant as rock,

and actions, here, in the coldest months, before

soldiers move again in the fields to the south.

from: The Dirt She Ate: New and Selected Poems, Copyright 2003.