A Garden of Plenty
Childhood memories of a finite place with infinite life
When I was two years old, my parents and I moved to a small town in the Portuguese countryside, where we would live for the next 14 years. It was a 30 minute drive from the city where my parents worked, just enough distance to make renting a house with a garden affordable.
That garden soon became my favorite place. The day we moved in, it was but a barren piece of land covered in rocks and weeds. Over the years, my parents lovingly transformed it into a paradise for family, friends, and a motley crew of creatures—from dogs and cats to birds, insects, moles, and other pests that came and went. It became a realm of marvel, adventure, and quiet reflection. Allow me to be your guide.
To my young eyes, the garden seemed at least three times the size of the house. At the very back, was a towering rhododendron with vibrant fuchsia leaves. A paradoxical being, with its crown shining in the sun for all to see, while beneath it it was always cool and somber. I admired it from afar, and would only visit when it was time to tend to the doghouse or let the dog out to romp the day away.
Standing with your back to the rhododendron, you got an overview of the garden. To the left, the clothesline, where sheets and shirts danced in the wind, releasing a fine mist. Beside it, the laundry shack, a place of toil, where hands rubbed clothes against the stone washboard or slaughtered the occasional chicken giften by one of my mom’s patients.
The heart of the garden was an open grassy area, a playground for children and adults alike. We played lawn games, dipped inside inflatable kiddie pools, played badminton, hosted parties or just basked in the sun.
To the right, were two fruit trees- a moody apple tree, with its tart and unpredictable fruit, and a more amenable peach tree, offering juicy peaches worthy of showing off to guests. Harvesting peaches required patience and skill. You either waited for them to naturally fall to the ground, or you took matters into your own hands by shaking it vigorously, hoping none would hit you on the head. I relished climbing up the apple tree. Despite its disappointing fruit, she was always available to play.
As you approached the house, two sentinels stood guard. One, a well that supplied water for the house. Standing atop the well, I felt tall and grown up, and got a good view of the landscape. I was fascinated by the dark mystery inside. On the few occasions the heavy stone lid was dislodged and I got to peer down its depth, the metallic smell and the invisible echo of water sparked both fear and curiosity. What would it be like to be down there? Was something else living down there?
The other sentinel, and the queen of the garden, was the fig tree. Her formidable, indifferent roots lifted the earth and cracked the concrete porch forming waves like the ocean’s. We had an unspoken agreement with the bird about the figs, these massive purple figs that oozed nectar from their gashes and scars. The birds would eat the figs on the top, and we would take the ones at the bottom. And plenty they were. We had fig jam to last us decades.
Around the corner, on the east side of the house, flourished rose bushes, wild berries, hardy fuchsia, a lemon tree (also reluctant in her bounty) and a marvelous magnolia, the apple of my mother’s eye.
It was in this garden that I cultivated my observation skills and gained an appetite for nuance. Free from the pull of digital devices, I had plenty of unscheduled time to study every inch, or simply sit and let the garden come to me. One of the greatest pleasures in life is to witness nature unfold before your eyes, and synchronize our tempo with hers. The garden was a small theater where the drama of life played out each day. Like that time our friends’ retired police dog mistook the gardener for an intruder, stealthily biting his ankle in true K-9 style (both dog and human recovered). Or the time when the cat stormed off never to return after my attempt to turn him into an official pet with a makeshift leash around its neck. Or when the villagers would come over every year with large wicker baskets to harvest grapes from the vines that overflowed onto our side of the wall from the neighboring vineyard.
Nature, as I learned, knows no fences. And neither does our spirit.
What a wonderful piece Ana Lucia! You took me right into the garden and how you felt there. Thanks for this and hope you have a wonderful 2024!