From This Perch: A Garden Story

Once upon a time there was a parcel of land nestled deep in old farm country. On this parcel of land, hidden from anyone who didn’t bother to look, was a garden.

If a passerby took time to notice, there among the juniper and dogwood, just beyond the boxwood, was a little gray-haired woman who tended the garden.

In the spring, she picked up fallen twigs and stacked them near the fire pit. She pruned roses, cleaned bird boxes, and placed mulch around new daffodils poking up through hard soil. She hung geranium baskets along her tall wooden fence, and when the frosts finally receded, scattered zinnia seeds in the beds.

When the frosts finally receded, she scattered zinnia seeds in the beds

In summer, she filled bird baths, made hummingbird nectar, and weeded a path made from old chimney bricks. She pruned drooping hackberry limbs off her split-rail fence and watched the milkweed draw monarchs.

When autumn arrived, she kept feeders filled with nuts and seeds for migrators. Her sister, who knew of such things, bought her some bark butter. The little gray-haired woman spread it on the mulberry trunk for the white-breasted nuthatch.

Winter in the garden was mostly quiet. There were still woodpeckers and chickadees, cardinals and wrens. The little gray-haired woman mixed their bird seed with bacon fat and piled it on a wooden slab. She waited, each day, quietly watching the snow and ice, until it was time again to pick up fallen twigs and stack them near the fire pit.

Winter in the garden was mostly quiet

But the garden was not always so. It had seen different days.

A hundred years earlier, a man rode down from Pennsylvania. He bought the parcel of land deep in farm country and built a house on it. He probably had a kitchen garden with vegetables and a few herbs. There was a carriage house for his buggy. He threw bits of trash in the back, old bottles, broken harness buckles, and a well-worn plumb bob. The man grew old, He sold the house and parcel. It changed hands over the years. Someone put in a fishpond. Another thought the pond a bother and took it out. The carriage house was knocked down and lawned over. Trash and forgotten things piled up: cinder blocks, broken pallets, old crockery.

A man bought the parcel of land deep in farm country and built a house on it

When the little gray-haired woman and her less-little gray-haired husband bought the parcel and house, she cleared out what would not belong in her garden. Then she dug a hole. First in her garden was the leather-leaf holly. Then came the chokeberry bush. Next the lilac shrubs. A family of wrens cocked their heads and watched as she planted two apple trees.

First in her garden was the leather-leaf holly

The little women scooped more holes, added plants, and her garden grew. In came Caesar’s Brother, Joe Pye Weed, Beardtongue, and Blue-eyed Grass. Other natives arrived all on their own and she let them stay. There was fragrant honeysuckle, orange lilies, and sweet blackberries that cedar waxwings eyed once the mulberries were gone.

She filled large pots with oakleaf hydrangea named Alice and Ruby Slipper. Friends brought her hellebores and a small slip of beauty berry that grew large and graceful. Honeybees came and worked their way through her cosmos. The more she tended, the busier it got. And she was happy.

Cedar Waxwing in the Mulberry Tree

Others had once lived in the house on the parcel. And each of them had used the land as they saw fit. But now it was a garden. The little gray-haired woman would not be here forever, but for now, once upon this very time, she was here, and this was her garden.