(Another, slightly more fleshed out version of this essay is on Medium. The thoughts below were written in a frenzy after watching Lemonade the weekend it was released.)
Mother dearest, let me inherit the Earth.
The first few frames of Lemonade show weeds and reeds rustling in the wind, growing out of literal ruins. The framing device — a giant, mature live oak tree, dripping with Spanish moss — is the constant, the ever-present protection and watcher, growing still despite its painful Southern history. A cluster of powerful, creative, assertive black women adorn its branches, gazing firmly into the camera. Later, those same women will till the fertile earth and pull from it food and sustenance, coaxing life from the land, coated in color and sunlight.
Yesterday afternoon we got back to Chicago after a week in Asheville, North Carolina. In so many ways, the two places couldn’t be more different, and I know I’ll be struggling for some time to readjust to life here in the Midwest. In the meantime, I’m slowly processing my photos, remembering the incredible places we went and the native plants I mentally catalogued, and burning souvenir sticks of balsam fir incense that, wondrously, smell exactly like Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Almost as if the digital gods decided to smile upon me, today my feed was filled with glorious photos of sunset cliffs and gleaming blue alpine lakes, locked up with quotes from the Thoreaus/Carsons/Muirs of our shared ecological history. It’s Earth Day. Which, to be honest, I had forgotten because I generally avoid looking at calendars when I’m on vacation. And though I couldn’t celebrate the day from the backcountry, at least I was able to reminisce about my own recent outdoor excursions and bask in the unabashed naturelove of my friends’ friends.
The other way I celebrated this day was by picking up trash. Standard fare, I know, but important nonetheless. Upon returning to Chicago, my eyes blinked new again, remembering and noticing the vast array of street garbage piled against business facades and below residential gating. So I grabbed the paper bag blowing down the sidewalk (the one my faulty vision originally registered as a wild bunny) and filled it with trash until the handles broke and the corners threatened to burst.
The lesson here is: use what you’ve got before buying more of it. Especially in light of how traditional Earth Day cleanups may actually be creating more garbage. Either way, I’ve found the best garbage bag is the one tumbling down the street right in front of you. And you don’t have to wait until this time next year to organize your own foraged cleanup. Wherever there’s a littered bag, there’s likely litter nearby begging for a home.
And so was born my Earth Day dispatch. Tomorrow will bring more green thinking and probably more garbage grabbing because I just can’t help myself. This place, Chicago, is home, even with its litter and noise, but its long-awaited turn toward spring and warmth is undeniable and finally upon us. Still, simultaneously, I’m thinking fondly of Asheville and trying to hold tightly to the clear evening light and the tree leaf rustle and the specific music of the birds outside our temporary home.
The great reward at the end of a long flat gray rainy day is the cool neon blue the sky turns after the sun goes down. For a brief while it glows, like an idled desktop monitor, and every wet surface reflects default blue and streetlight amber. Some days the cover breaks and you can see the wispy remains of the storm’s slate gray clouds, drifting left into darkness.
Last night I missed my connecting bus, and so walked the ten minutes to my house in the cold spring rain. When the initial anger of tail-light syndrome passed, I turned my attention to the sound of car tires sizzling against wet pavement, and how dark black the bare tree branches looked after a full day’s soak. It’s holding on tight, that part of spring when the trees are still sleeping. There are a few high achievers, but most haven’t changed since the last leaf dropped in fall. I kept an eye out for blooming bulbs, most hanging heavy heads and nodding under rhythmic droplets. I lingered alongside the low strip of land next to the local park fieldhouse — already covered in weeds that wasted no time making their eager return above ground.
My eyes caught the last of the blue glow after climbing the stairs to my apartment. It quickly deepened, then settled into the matte graybrown of an urban night sky. The brick buildings across the street pulled on their muddy orange bedclothes, reflecting the streetlights’ shadowed shine, and the hiss of commuting cars one story below echoed again to the north and to the south.
There’s a part of me that deeply and actively loves nature; boldly surrounding myself with it, shamelessly looking at it, smelling it, plunging my hands into it, listening for evidence of it, paying close attention to its myriad expressions. There’s another part of me that knows it’s a temporary love, a love defined by an essential distance. I am part of nature, but I am separate from it. I know nature, but being human I can never fully integrate into it. I can observe and appreciate and cultivate, but I will also clumsily inhibit and knowingly destroy.
I find myself living in two times: today, current time, when there is still beauty and life worth protecting; and the barren future, the time which will come to be, when our haphazard misuse of the land and aggressive overconsumption of its resources renders the earth uninhabitable for our species and all the others.
This dual existence has a name: shadowtime. A concept developed to describe an understanding of the world on two distinct but somehow simultaneous timescales. It’s the unsettling realization that the way we live now is most likely going to be very different, very soon.
I often struggle to reconcile my relatively quiet tendencies toward nature writing and outdoor recreation with the tumultuous anarchy and deep environmental chaos that I feel we’re hurtling toward. I’ve been a conservation steward, spearheaded greening movements, and voted for candidates who stump for ecological causes. But there remains a dull ache. A pinprick of worry that it’s too late and we can’t fix it.
So what do we do? Well, I write, of course. And I also read. These days there’s an endless stream of environmental reportage, most of which is either boring (let’s be honest), or too terrifying to fully comprehend. But every so often something equal parts informative and engaging rises to the surface. A perfect example is Robert Macfarlane’s recent piece in The Guardian, Generation Anthropocene: How humans have altered the planet forever.
It’s an incredible introduction to the current geological era, and a selected catalogue of the contemporary writing and art it has inspired. The piece is ambitious and excellent, and I’m fascinated by the ways artists are interpreting and connecting over this concept. It would be easy to crumble under the weight of understanding that our actions today will be worn in the earth’s strata record for millions of years. But artists are approaching the environmental debate in a different way: by developing new terms to describe the emotional impact of living in a world on a deadline; by unapologetically painting an accurately fearsome future for us to ponder; by connecting to the earth via connecting to their own human instinct for shared narrative. By doing what they do best: creating.
Perhaps creating is the only comfort we have in the face of our difficult reality and future. The impulse to create definitely carries its own brand of uncertain turbulence. But it may still be the only relief we get from the looming weight of shadowtime.
I’m trying to take my outdoor garden space more seriously this year. I always take time spent outdoors seriously. When there are only about 170 days in the growing season, you make the most of it. Even when you’re not actively growing anything.
But this year I want to be an outdoor gardener. I want to walk out on our back porch and be surrounded by green, by sprouts that root deeply and grow to spill over the sides of our rickety deck railing. I want it to be lush. I want herbs and perennials and native grasses. So I’m amassing prairie seeds from local seed savers, and hoarding large volume outdoor pots, and learning the ins and outs of artificial cold stratification. The farmer’s almanac says I still have some time before last frost, so I’m trying to soak up all the information I can before heading outdoors.
Of course, I’m not starting from scratch. I’ve grown plants indoors for years, decades now. I’ve had some trial and error. I’ve killed some plants and helped others thrive. I have experience. But something about this transition feels daunting. I feel a bit like I’m staring into the deep green unknown where a million septuagenarians are holding tight their best kept secrets for getting a second flush of tall thimbleweed blooms. I’ve only successfully overwintered plants once. I know nothing about making compost. Suddenly, it feels like I’ve got a lot to learn.
The nicest thing anyone’s ever said about my indoor plant collection was that it was a garden. I’d never heard anyone describe my overachiever’s hobby in quite those words. It was said by a friend of ours to his two year old son. He encouraged his boy to look at all the plants. That weren’t they nice? That they were a garden, just like ones they’ve seen outside. I saw recognition flutter over the boy’s eyes and if someone had been looking at me, they probably would have seen the same flutter in mine.
It was the first time I’d considered my collection of houseplants as anything more than a haphazard assortment, slowly and accidentally pieced together over thirteen years of living in a manic urban tundra. I’ve since looked around at the crowd of aging terra cotta pots and the greenery they hold and I realize I have indeed built a garden. The varied sizes and textures of the foliage, the drifts of color and contrasting variegation in the leaves, the transitions of growth and the seasonal interest — it’s all happening indoors too.
What makes us add the qualifier in front when we call ourselves “indoor gardeners”? Yes, it’s helpful to add some detail as to location and general point of view. I know a container garden has different needs from one that’s sown directly into the ground. But I hope our insistence on specifying where the gardening is happening isn’t indicating that what we’re doing is somehow less involved, less skilled. The care and monitoring and pruning that my inside plants require is real. Just as real as any deadheading or hardening off or N-P-Ks needed by the ones outside.
So, come last frost, I’ll be heading outdoors. I’ll be trying out some new species, expanding my glossary of terms, firming up my maintenance schedule, and building on my existing store of knowledge. I’m anticipating some growth. And some heartbreak. I’m ready for the challenge. And if all else fails, I know I can always come back inside, where I first set roots long ago.
It’s incredible the things you forget you’re missing during the long pause of winter. The things you learn to live without when you have no other choice.
I smelled Spring today during my walk through the park. It smelled of damp dirt.
It wasn’t a spectacular smell. Not bad. Just normal. But noteworthy in its ordinariness. It hinted at possibility, at the changes to come. At the tiny sprouts preparing to emerge from newly thawed ground. Waiting, like tiny toddler dancers. Jittering in the wings, poised to take the stage at their spring showcase.
I saw Spring on the branches of the Purple Leaf Plum tree behind our apartment. Its bare, dusty branches bejeweled with tiny round buds, sitting quietly on forked arms reaching up toward the warming sun. The tips of the nearby Callery Pear are likewise adorned and will soon burst into musky white blooms.
I saw Spring reflected in the curb puddles and the snowmelt and the stillwater collected in last Summer’s plastic planters. I saw it in the return of gardening displays in brightly lit retail spaces. Lime green gloss varnish cover stock and double walled cardboard seedpack towers. Mass-produced eyecatchers reminding us it’s almost time to put our hands back in the ground.
I heard Spring this morning in the chirps of the sideyard sparrows and singing wrens. In the sweet call of the bright red cardinal that’s made its way back to our tree. Or maybe it never flew south at all, just huddled in the cracks between roof shingles on the coachhouse, waiting out winter’s loose handful of flurries.
I heard Spring in the sounds of waking up, sounds drifting up from one floor down. A deadbolt’s loud clunk and the squeal of a back door creaking open: hopeful neighbors testing the air to see if it’s warm enough for the season’s first porch-bound beer.
I felt Spring in the sliver of warm light that slipped through the gap in my bedroom curtains. Resting on my face, incrementally earlier and stronger than the morning before. In the mild dash of wind that slid through my jacket zipper while waiting on the train platform high above Fullerton Avenue. In the marked increase of humidity in the air, and the unfamiliar touch of dew that leaped from greening grass and soaked through unsealed boot gussets.
The way it usually goes in Chicago is: Spring feels very far away for a long time. You walk through the entirety of winter, nose buried behind scarf and collar, eyes locked to the space directly in front of you. You whine for warmth, but you don’t dare look for it on the ground and in the trees. Until one day, it’s suddenly just there. A green leaf poking up from beneath withered mulch. A spray of purple growth on an old yellow lawn. A pop of color where there once was none. An open door.
Soon there will be bright green tree flowers hovering high overhead, creamy magnolia blossoms, and long legged tulips. We’ll bask in the sudden abundance with feasts of snow peas garlic scapes asparagus fava beans ramps. Leaves of every shape and size and texture will push through hardened bark and twist and turn toward the sun. Bulky raindrops will announce their arrival with heavy taps at double-paned glass, searching wildly for roots to wet.
But for now, we’re just at the beginning. And I’m enjoying our early Spring with as many senses as I can.
If we hurried, I could see it
before it closed to contemplate
becoming seed.
Hand in hand, we entered
the light-spattered morning-dark woods.
Where he pointed was only a white flower
until I saw him seeing it.
from “Ruellia Noctiflora” by Marilyn Nelson
Poems can be tough. I remember in grade school we all thrilled when our teachers introduced a unit on poetry, expecting the work to be quick and the homework painless. But we quickly discovered poems to be self-sustaining universes; each line its own world, each word a city block with millions of possible meanings.
In “Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry” editor Camille T. Dungy has invited readers to reconsider the anatomy of the nature poem, and to reconsider the cultural and ethnic makeup of that poem’s author. Since being brought to the new world, Africans and African Americans have cultivated a unique, complex, and often fraught relationship with the land. These poems shed light on the pain and the reality of that history. And they also celebrate it, observing the beauty of the Earth, and our own beauty within it. Even works written from the city dweller’s perspective sound and feel different when read through nature’s lens.
The collection is organized into ten thematic cycles, each introduced with an essay written by one of the anthology’s represented poets. Themes include observation (the elements of the Earth, the beauty of living beings, finding ourselves in nature), confrontation (what happens when the land turns its back on you, natural disasters, and violence bestowed on us in this place), and reconciliation (largely embodied in the gorgeous-from-start-to-finish section titled “Comes Always Spring”).
The poems are beautiful. Some are angry and difficult. Most demand multiple reads — if not for comprehension, then for wanting to be enveloped just one more time. Each poem opens up its writer’s world, just a little, inviting you in to find yourself and your own experience between the line breaks and punctuation. As poems, they are evocative and insightful. As nature poems, they are gloriously visual and sensual. As black nature poems, they are all of the above, as well as indicative of our particular experiences as keepers, stewards, and inhabitants of this land.
My favorite aspect of the collection was the conversation each cycle of poems opened up between the pages and generations. The sections aren’t organized chronologically, so words written in the 18th and 19th centuries, by men and women born into slavery, share space with pieces written just in the past decade. As the book unfolds, the reader can’t help but gain a clearer understanding of the depth and history of our relationship to the Earth, discovering that even as time may pass, many things have stayed the same for us. Fascination with the world’s wild species. Fear of nature’s wrath, and the wrath of those we may encounter within it. Pride in the land, and pride in our own resilience. And joy and delight in the inevitable return of Spring.
This is a wonderful collection, one that I devoured during my daily commutes, saving me from myself during so many furious, traffic-bound bus rides. It introduced me to writers I hadn’t heard of, and reminded me of writers I’ve been wanting to return to. It also introduced me to myself, to a tradition that I’m clearly part of, to a legacy of listening to and learning from the Earth. A legacy that stretches far beyond me in both directions.
I am fortunate to have been raised in Southern California by my mother, another avid plant lover. I was taught names like philodendron, jacaranda, and agapanthus as soon as I was old enough to pronounce them. Freeways lined with bougainvillea and curbside cacti were the backdrop of my early life. I don’t think my mom planned to turn me into a gardener, just as I don’t think she planned to turn me into a writer. But both happened and her influence is undeniable.
In my house growing up, we had two things in abundance: books and plants. They crowded just about every room, even the kitchen. They were constants. Plants crowded the front windows in our living room, bigger than me, eager for sunshine, and largely self-sufficient. I barely remember my mom watering them, but the pruning was perpetual. Even in family members’ houses or dentist offices, my mom’s wiry hands would find their way into other peoples’ plants, picking at yellowed leaves and pulling at dusty overgrowth. When I feel my fingers inch toward my friends’ forgotten foliage, I know exactly where the habit came from.
I grew into a flower child. I memorized the names of standard grocery store blooms and generally adopted the perspective of a budding hippie. I snatched up weeds and grasses for rough little bouquets while wearing Peace Love and Happiness necklaces from Claire’s. I recycled religiously. I got bussed out to rustic and upscale Topanga Canyon for school-led hikes where we learned to forage for nasturtium greens and the sour stems of the buttercup oxalis. I took up photography in my teens and spent entire rolls of 35mm on fleshy agave leaves.
When I moved to the midwest for college, I marveled at how different the trees were, at how ivy engulfed brick houses whole, at how distanced people seemed from their natural environment. For the first time in my life, I witnessed littering in action. I figured out what winter is really like. I discovered a whole new roster of plants, and learned to appreciate them even more as they died back in fall and miraculously returned each spring.
I bought my first plant when I studied abroad in France: a small green fittonia with bright white veins. I gave it a place of prominence in my dorm room, hoping to make those four walls feel more like home. When I flew back to the states, I mourned its loss as much as I mourned no longer living in Paris. In 2007, when I moved into my first solo apartment in Chicago, a potted plant is what made that little studio really feel like mine. The young tell tale heart coleus thrived in my west facing window, and though it may be scraggly, it’s still in my collection, growing slowly larger with each passing year.
That first apartment became my safe haven, and a welcome home for my budding family of houseplants. Most members began as small starts, or cuttings gifted from friends. Others joined the group when their owners thought them dead and watched on in disbelief as I patiently brought them back.
I’ve bribed friends with cars to help me move twice since that apartment. In 2010, my plants limped through life in a well-appointed apartment with unfortunate northern exposure. In 2012, I moved northwest to my current home, my giant dracaena fragrans trailing out of the back of a friend’s SUV, waving to passersby along Milwaukee Avenue. In 2015, I spread out and took my gardening habit outside, which is where I spotted an abandoned monstera deliciosa in the garbage heap. I dragged it up to my balcony and helped it sprout new roots in a mason jar. It recently unfurled its first new leaf.
Every plant has a story, and every story marks the start of a new moment in my own life. Over the years, the plants have taught me patience and gratitude and humility. They continuously bring me joy and pride. They’ve introduced me to friends and connected me with my family; a fact I’m reminded of whenever I talk to my mom about her own voracious garden. Or when I think back to my grandparents’ muggy New Orleans sunroom, where Katrina barreled through dozens of tropical specimens and decades of family memories.
I didn’t realize I was a Plant Person until a couple of years ago when it dawned on me that in an emergency, my plants would be the only possessions I would regret not being able to save. I never intended to fill my windows — and my life — with leaves and branches and vines. To dole out garden advice to friends and coworkers. To eagerly absorb plant knowledge from my elders. To happily memorize latin names and kitchen remedies. But it seems that things usually progress as they were meant to.
There’s still so much to learn, and in many ways I still I feel like a total beginner. But I know I’m a plantswoman. I have been all along.
All the photos from this post were taken in high school with my trusty Pentax ZX-M.
Like many living things, and some people too, plants are experts in communication and forgiveness. They’ll give off signs of distress when something’s not quite right. If you can figure out what’s going on (and be patient), they’ll perk back up and shoot out new roots. They’re supremely adaptable. So despite my deep devotion, most of my plants have experienced some level of trauma. It’s rarely been dire, though in those moments I’ve tried to pay attention and adopt some of the quiet lessons they teach. Perseverance, subtlety, flexibility. Remembering that it won’t always be perfect. That growth happens in both directions.
Four years ago, I brought home a small African Milk Tree (Euphorbia trigona). It looked something like a greenish purple candelabra, with a few branches jutting out from the main trunk. Short prickly spines and clusters of teardrop-shaped leaves ran down along its ridged arms. It was sculptural and healthy and looked unlike any plant I’d previously cared for.
I stuck it in a place of prominence, on the western facing windowsill, the sunniest spot in the house. It seemed to settle in well, so I didn’t pay it much attention, watering it maybe once a month. Less in the winter, really whenever I remembered. I’ve learned that plants do best when you bring home the ones that will fit into your lifestyle. If you won’t remember to check your hygrometer daily, your fern collection is probably not going to work out. Likewise, if you love watering plants daily and have tons of time on your hands, you may mean well, but you could end up drowning your cactus.
The euphorbia and I were a solid match. It quietly reminded me of the huge desert plants I grew up around in L.A. and I welcomed the nostalgia, especially during the darker months when snow abounds and truly sunny days are scarce. I found a small kind of joy in noticing the plant’s seasonal growth spurts, changes in color, loss of leaves, and dormancy. I measured the progress of the passing months in number of new branches and handfuls of crisped up leaflets that I diligently threw out. I was proud.
This past December, we took inventory and gave all the plants a good examination while insulating the windows. Carefully taking the euphorbia down from the windowsill, I realized how big it had gotten over the years. Its tallest arm easily reached my chin. The plant that started at 12″ tall was now almost as big as me.
When it came time to put it back in the window, I set it somewhat back from the frame. It stood for a few days, leaning precariously, its top-heavy limbs bowed by gravity’s pull. I hoped that the sun and its promise of chlorophyll would persuade it to straighten out, but as you may be able to guess, it didn’t quite work out that way. One recent evening I heard the unmistakeable sound of collapse. I watched, almost in slow motion, as the plant fell over the side of the table, onto the floor, and into a giant pile of dry soil and tangled limbs. Arms broke off. Its spines pierced its skin and released tiny beads of stale smelling white liquid.
Had this been my first plant, I probably would have cried. But I knew the deal. Some growth had been lost, but we would both recover. The drama was temporary and life would go on. The plant is now being held upright with the help of twine and the weight of a neighboring bookcase. It’s not the most visually pleasing solution, but it works. Since the fall, many leaves have crisped and died. The colors of the plant have darkened from emerald green to a deep eggplant. The cycles of growth and dieback are progressing as they usually would. The giant tumble was just a moment.
Living with plants has taught me a lot about myself. About what to get upset about, and what to let go. About how much effort to put into something, and what I should or can expect in return. About the joy of caring for something other than myself, and the joy of feeling cared for. About being observant and training myself not to take things for granted. I’m learning that I’m more capable of forgiveness than I used to be: toward others and toward myself. I have the plant to thank for that, the plant and its unrelenting forgiveness.
It’s very cold here. Colder than it’s been in a long while. I don’t have any warm weather vacations on the horizon, so I let the memories of my last few trips to South Florida take me on a mental vacation. As it turns out, spending all day thinking and writing about a semi-tropical place is exactly the medicine my sun-starved, winter-ridden soul needed.
The result? The new Miami Green City Guide is now live! Take a look.
