 My
daughter has a garden on the hillside behind our house. Kudzu also grows on that hillside,
and she patiently pulls it out, root by root. Among its insidious vines she has bravely
planted squash and watermelons, pumpkins and cucumbers, and strange plants: paw-paw trees,
gooseberry bushes, kiwi.I watch her from the bedroom window as she moves unhurriedly among her plants, hand-pollinating her squash blossoms with a watercolor brush, misting her herbs from a bronze can. She brought home from a nursery a mesh bag full of living ladybugs--one thousand five hundred of them; enchanted, I followed along behind her as she brushed them out of the bag and off her brown arms onto her pepper plants and tomato vines. "These are for the aphids," she explained, gently shaking ladybugs off her purple skirt. "You might as well have bought a bagful of butterflies," I told her. "They'll all fly away." "I don't care," she said serenely, smiling at me from under her straw hat. Once I came upon her in the evening light, sitting near her scarlet runner beans, quietly pulling up kudzu in a wide circle around her. I had felt sorrow for her that day, thinking about how excited she had been to graduate from college, how hard it must be for her to wait to start her life. . . . But behind her on the hillside were snapdragons and flame-flowers, radishes and bee-balm, cucumbers and lemon mint, all growing together in happy confusion. She looked up at me, and there was mud on her face. "Hi, Mom," she said contentedly. I stooped down and hugged her to me. "I love this garden you made," I said. "Thanks," she said, pleased. We walked down together to the house for supper, and I felt her peacefulness as I walked beside her. Somewhere among the kudzu and the watermelon vines, one thousand five hundred ladybugs were settling in for the night, here in the Kingdom of Heaven. |
