June 23, 2011- Unearthing the Past

I've been thinking alot about the woman who owned our home before we did.  She was here for many years (25?), but I'd never thought much about her imprint on the house until I started gardening this summer.  The inside of our house is fully ours- renovated, decorated, nothing-but-us.  But if you dig a little deeper, outside, there are traces of this woman's touch everywhere.  I'll be putting in a plant and find an earth-covered tag for a long-ago geranium, or an heirloom tomato.  Buried under years of neglect, I've found climbing roses that are now blooming again, and more surprises keep poking up from the ground at every corner.  The peanuts she put in the soil are still turning up, and since they've made our little plot incredibly fertile I keep thanking her whenever I find one.  I picture her puttering around the roses, clipping back lavender in the winter, carefully training clematis up our white picket fence just as I am doing.  She is almost a grandmotherly ghost.  Surely she was a kindred spirit, or she wouldn't have picked this dear house and lovingly planted all the same plants I am tending to now.  It's nice to have a gardener-ghost.

A few weeks ago, though, we found a relic from an earlier era.  We dug up an old dime from under the roses in the front yard- it was flat and worn thin, and took ages to scrub- but lo and behold, 1910.  Our house was built in 1916, so I like to imagine it falling, already well-used, from a carpenter's pocket on his way up the front walk.  It would have bought a good deal more in those days.  D looked up how valuable it might be now, and it's worth about $6.50.  So much for A's college tuition :-(   It's been on our kitchen windowsill ever since, glinting dully in the sun and reminding us of all the people who have planted and hammered, lived and worked on this tiny plot of earth for at least a century before we came along to 'start a garden'.

"Landscape is personal and tribal history made visible."     Yi-Fu Tuan