Lessons from the Garden
Rosie died sometime in the early spring on a bleak day of sparse daylight and no discernible whispers of impending rebirth. She died at a time when I wasn’t paying attention to her basic needs. I miss her greatly and reflect on her empty home with recriminations and regret.
Rosie the rosemary plant has been part of my growth as a practicing herbalist for many years. Advice I had been given in herb school was to put rosemary essence in every remedy because “it just smells like it’s going to work.” It was good advice. I love the uplifting scent of rosemary and its can-do approach to many human ailments. Thus began my quest to grow a single rosemary plant and overwinter it in my mountain gardens. There were a few pre-Rosie’s that I planted and mulched and mothered in the spirit of reckless hope, blatant disregard for practical wisdom and because I didn’t know another way of being. They inevitably succumbed to the cold.
When I saw a huge, snow-covered, potted rosemary bush on a waterfront patio in Lund, BC it was a eureka moment for me and I optimistically planted a baby rosemary in my spring garden and dug her up in the fall to bring inside for the winter. This uprooting happened successfully for many seasons. She got so big and so heavy that the last time she came into the house for the winter, I had to get my husband to move her in the tractor bucket to the front door. Once potted, she took up most of the window space in my spare bedroom.
She had adapted so well to this pattern of relocation I began to believe it was a forever thing. She stayed with me for so long that I named her Rosie and she became a dependable constant in my life…. until she abruptly left.
In retrospect, I blame my Dad.
Hiraeth “is in the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It is everywhere and nowhere.”
He was a stubborn grower of gladiolus, English roses and other delicate flowering plants foreign to our wind-blown and winter-raw Nova Scotia home. Dad’s needy and demanding plants were so successful despite the environmental hardships imposed by a rock overlooking the North Atlantic, that his plots of expensive top soil readily attained the elite status of ‘garden’ and Dad a ‘gardener’ aka ‘green thumb’. His successes encouraged me to think that I could grow anything, anywhere if I tried hard enough. He unintentionally encouraged me to believe that human determination casts the final vote.
One morning in early summer, while drinking coffee on my deck, my eyes came to rest on Rosie’s vacated pot of soil. I had cut back all the dead branches hoping she would regenerate from her massive root. The chickweed had readily sprung from the earth but I noticed also that the self-seeded dill was growing rapidly in the pot as well. With us and without us, life goes on. I don’t know why I have to be constantly reminded that the land belongs to itself and the course of nature can be deflected but not brought to heel.
I still wonder why growing delicate flowers was so important to my Dad and over-wintering a single rosemary plant was to me except that our temporary successes made us happy, gave us a sense of control. Now that both my parents have died and their house sold, there is no evidence of Dad’s spectacular gardens on that property, as there is no remnant of Rosie on this one besides her dead root. Perhaps Dad’s and my shared cellular memories of perfect English gardens created by our ancestors in our ancient homeland guided our beliefs and choices. The Welsh explanation of this phenomenon is the noun “hiraeth”, and it refers to the spiritual longing and grief for ancient places to which we can never return. Perhaps the need to recreate the lost places that our souls once knew is as inevitable as it is a hopeless quest.
