this is the before picture:

people who’ve known me for a while will have heard the story of “the day jen decided to start gardening”. shortly after i’d moved back to boston, i found myself unemployed, up early one morning with nothing to do and contemplating my new back yard. having my own back yard was a novelty to me, having just come from 8 years spent in a shoebox of a new york apartment – i finally had an overgrown patch of earth to call my own. and by “overgrown”, i really mean junglefied. it had been sorely neglected for many years; while there was a corner of the yard that had evidence of once being a garden, there were large thickets of bamboo grass, unruly grapevines with an invasive stranglehold, and stands of weeds higher than my head. and so, as i stood there on the back porch with my coffee one unseasonably warm spring morning, surveying my newfound expanse of land and overlooking the overgrowth, i thought i’d start taking out just a few of the biggest weeds. wandering in wearing my pyjamas and slippers, i grabbed hold and started pulling. after a few short minutes, i came across a weed i’d never encountered before – it had tuberous roots, thick as fingers, that went straight down deep into the ground like underground cables. trying to pull only resulted in the roots breaking off beneath the surface, a definite no-no if you want to eradicate weeds. i had no proper gardening implements, but looking around i found a big stick… and started digging to china.

i spent 10 straight hours that day, digging up weeds, lopping back branches, and sifting through soil. i spent the entire day in the blazing sun up to my eyeballs in dirt, and by the time dusk fell, my shoulders were knotted, my face burnt, my pyjamas ruined. but i had transformed that wildly tangled eyesore into a square of beautifully groomed and prepared soil, with nothing but my stick and brute force. it was (and remains) one of the most satisfying things i’ve ever undertaken.

that summer, my garden became my oasis. i planted vegetables, flowers and herbs – i still remember the layout, where the snapdragons and sunflowers were staked along the fence, the thick bumper crops of basil and tomatoes that i gave away to friends and neighbours in brown paper bags, the exuberant orange daylilies that edged the perimeter. on my way home from work in the afternoons, i’d stop off for a six pack of sam adams and a newspaper. let the dog out to roll around on the lawn, set up the armchair in the sun, turn on the radio, and read the paper while nursing my beer and listening to music backed by the soft chug-chug-chug of the sprinkler. i tenderly nurtured those small green shoots, watched with pride as they grew bigger and stronger, and silently mourned as the blooms faded and fell. years after i’d long-since moved from that apartment, i’d find myself wondering if new tenants had kept it up, or even noticed the care and attention i’d invested for so long.

this is my second garden, and while it doesn’t hold a candle to the size of my first, i found myself out in my pyjamas last saturday, hacking away with a small pair of pruners and pulling down giant swathes of creeper. lots more work to do, but it’s a start:

parlour steps – the garden

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