Gardening Dumpster Alley
MAY 31, 2007--Alisa and I have moved since the year of our 100-mile diet. People often assume that this means we've moved up - left behind our one-bedroom apartment with its view of two dumpsters and, I don't know, bought a penthouse suite with a spiral staircase to the rooftop garden. Something like that.
In fact, we've only moved sideways. Our new rental does have a second bedroom - actually Alisa's office - but in a neighbourhood with considerably more…eccentricity. Our view has even more dumpsters than before, all lined up in an alley that is popular with heroin users and other drug addicts. It's not a dangerous place - these are polite Canadian junkies - but it isn't always pretty, either. The other day I walked past a woman, pants down, injecting something into a butt cheek. I try to be empathetic, but, in her case, I didn't even know what I was having empathy for.
There is one magnificent new vision out the window: gardens. Our new apartment block has garden space - big garden space. Every day since we moved in, though, the space had seemed to shrink - a jungle closing in on all sides. The landscaping had gone to seed, and I made it my quest to bring order to the chaos.
It has turned into a kind of archaeology. What appeared at first glance to be nothing but weeds is slowly revealing a more intricate past. Under the ivy: blueberry bushes and two varieties of grape vines. Between the horsetail (itself a passable herb for tea): spearmint (it's been making its way into salsas and salads, and I'll have enough to dry for tea through next winter). Deep in the thistles: a good-sized shrub of oregano, trailing out into the alley. There are strawberry plants gone wild, and anise. I picked a nice bunch of salad chickweed I've ever seen, but my friend Ruben mistook it for a weed pile and it ended up in one of the dumpsters. The weed patch is also chockablock with beautiful snails (no, we don't eat them).
I've only begun to explore my new backyard, but it feels like the 100-mile diet in microcosm--sinking into a sense of place. Alisa and I have been on the road a lot since we moved into the new apartment, and I'm finding the garden is finally making the place feel like home.
So: what do I see out the window now? The dumpsters or the garden? Junky Alley or Country Lane? Well, I see both. It's not a collision of worlds. It's one world, constantly reminding us to look beyond the surface. -JBM
