The Life of a Garden

Before I came to live in tropical San Pancho, I made my home in the high desert of New Mexico. Our little farm town was in a river valley and our properties, lined up on either side of the river, were irrigated by an acequia system. An acequia (irrigation ditch) takes water from the river high upstream and brings it in decline, gentler than the river, to gates above the fields. When a gate is opened, water tumbles down on crops and gardens.

One never finished lowering this part of the land and raising that, making channels, trying to keep driveways dry, houses, too, getting water to new trees, giving up on hopeless corners. I lived there thirty-six years, and the irrigation work was never done. The winters were cold, and there was snow, but never quite enough melt to fill the river so that everyone in the valley could irrigate at will. The summers were hot and plants could wither in hours. Hail storms, late freezes, locusts…there was a lot of shaking fists at the heavens. It was only in my last years that I could look out on what had been a wasteland of cactus and burrs and see a lawn, large trees, flowers, vineyard, and orchard—a mature garden at last.

Things are different in San Pancho. Start with nurseries where a big day’s shopping might run you twelve dollars. Bananas can hit twenty-five feet in six months. Shade trees require no more than a couple of year’s patience. The birds-of-paradise fill in every empty spot. Philodendron grows leaves bigger than turkey platters. Bougainvillea reaches the roof and beyond. Bright birds come for the papayas. All is lush and the temperature drops fifteen degrees when you come in from the street. Your wrinkles are set back ten years and you could sit all day in contented viewing—a mature garden in time lapse.

Ah, but what comes after mature? Old. These days, philodendrons are choking the philodendrons. The bougainvillea is up on the roof throwing down the tiles. The birds-of-paradise don’t bloom under the shade of the trees. Plants which were intended to settle at different heights are all up there out of sight. Leaf mulch has raised the ground at least six inches. My house is disappearing into the vegetation like Angkor Wat.

To say that the garden needs “pruning” is to understate the problem. Daily, I, my husband, or my sometime gardener, cut, clip, chop and pull. Machete and chain saw. The pile grows in the parking area until the car won’t fit and we call on our neighbor to haul the stuff away in his pickup—for a handsome fee. By the next day the pile will be growing again. Twelve loads since December. Perhaps it is the excess of oxygen that keeps us happy anyway.