My Common Garden
If war has an opposite, gardens might sometimes be it…
– Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses
I don’t know what to think about the garden. When I moved here five years ago, the outside
was like a prison yard. Rectangular. Earthy. Poor prisoners. Is it really like that? I planted a
garden. I’d never been a gardener before. Every morning, the first thing I thought about was
new shoots. I’d go outside as the sun was coming up, intending to have a quick look to see
what had happened overnight, but I’d forget to come inside. I’d pluck weeds, plant lettuces,
squash aphids, wrangle the young Passionfruit. The next thing it would be mid-morning, and
I’d be behind with my work. Only a few other things in my life had got me so preoccupied.
Babies. Writing sometimes.
The next day, I don’t know what to think about the garden. I’m scared about what might lie
there. I’ve had my hands in the soil, in the leaves, among the small insects. I used to not mind
that, only think about the beauty of the garden. But I am scared about what my lie there.
The first spring, I planted a Mānuka tree with dahlias underneath. I was trying to make a
cottage garden like a settler. Native trees and English flowers. Like my friend who is a
gardener. It went okay for a while but then there was the Anniversary weekend flood. The
anniversary of the establishment of Auckland City. Which was quite funny, not funny. A
person died. The garden was flooded – a metre of water – and the small Mānuka tree fell
over. The dahlias actually survived their big bath. A few days later, there they were nodding
their heads. I put a post on Facebook, a photo and the caption, ‘Go little Dahlias. (Up to their
ears in water 10 days ago.)’ When I used to post on Facebook.
The next day, I still don’t know what to think about the garden.
When I went to Guides for two years, I was in Mānuka Patrol, and we pronounced it
Manooka. It felt Anglican and we were Catholic. That was the first time I saw the difference.
But couldn’t tell you what it was. The late sun slanting in to St Hilda’s church hall. There was
a leathery stack of The Book of Common Prayer, and I thought about common time, one two
three four, one two three four.
I start again with more native trees to soak up the water if there is another flood. Loie and
Gerry visit, and Loie says, you’re a gardener now! And they are farmers. So I think for a
moment, I am a gardener. I start thinking about the garden.
I think about fairies in the garden and my own mythology, and how it might have come here
on the boat. And have settled here in the garden. In Hawai`i, the Japanese settlers believe
their ghosts also migrated to the islands. But this is getting too complicated, the layers, the
twists. I want to think to just think about the thing that is the garden. The small room.
The next day I don’t want to think about the garden. And whether to have century with a
small c or a big C. And looking back at 50 years of hopefulness, since WWII, at least for
some people.
They made a Commons at the university as if it was for commoners but it was not.
The next day I don’t want to think about the garden. There are already some memories. At
Christmas, my brother sitting on the deck saying, the garden is like a room. Is like a camera.
My sister telling me again how upset my mother was when she discovered she was pregnant
with me. My brother said the garden is like a room.
I’d quite like to write one of those books about gardens, like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and
Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, about the
rescued garden, and Orwell’s Roses, by Rebecca Solnit, which is not just about gardens. In
fact, none of these books is just about gardens. But I am scared. I try to read the Yates
Gardening Guide. This is literally about gardening. But I am scared. I didn’t even like
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I found it a bit self-congratulatory in a moralistic way. This was
when I was twentysomething and arrogant. But those were the days.
The next day I don’t want to think about the garden. I listened to Animal Farm on audiobook,
and it is just as brilliant as I remember from when I was 13. Except at when I read it at 13, I
didn’t notice that the males were brave and/or interesting, and the females – the mares - are
vain and stupid. Clover is motherly but so dense she can’t learn the alphabet. Mollie is an
airhead: ‘Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion? … And shall I still be allowed to wear
ribbons in my mane?’ These were my role models. Hahahahaha.
The next day I am too scared to think about the garden. I mean, we were feminists and now
there is Andrew Tait. We marched up Queen St in our pussy hats, and again there is an idiot.
We wrote so many submissions they wouldn’t read them all, and still they are crossing out the
Treaty with a blue pen.
Olivia Laing wrote, ‘The garden that I chose had walls, but like every garden it was
interconnected, wide open to the world’, and that is sort-of my garden. My little of land
burrowing down into the earth, an appearing on council surveys, and being Ngāti Whātua
Ōrākei land, and not producing food. My garden just sits there.
The next day, I don’t know what to think about the garden. I attend an AlAnon meeting. I
know it is not very anonymous of me to say this. I am an adult child of. I am a sister of. Etc. I
know it’s not very anonymous of me to say this. But this is what I find: unless I say it, I don’t
know what to think.
I thought if you planted stuff there would be a garden. If you cooked and cleaned and drove
people around there would be family. If you marched over the bridge there would be a Treaty.
I thought if you made a garden it would be simple because it is a thing.
This is me thinking about the garden. I am scared.
Anne Kennedy is a poet, novelist and teacher. Her most recent books are The Sea Walks into a Wall, The Ice Shelf and, as editor, Remember Me: Poems to Learn by Heart from Aotearoa NZ. She is editor of AUP’s New Poets series. Awards include the Prime Minister's Award for Poetry and the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau.
