Natural History

I live in a stone house on a mountain. It's a small mountain, forty minutes north of midtown Manhattan. The wildlife in these parts is still running free. We see deer on our road almost daily. Bunnies frolic in our front yard after dark. Wild turkeys flaunt their gangly broods up and down my driveway, in broad daylight. Hawks circle overhead, and coyotes roam the neighbor's meadow at dusk. Down the mountain, on any side, you might call it Suburbia. Some stretches are less quaint than others. Scenic vistas, car dealerships, antique shops and sports bars, and a mammoth shopping mall are all within a few minutes drive.

My favorite part is the dirt. Especially at this time of year, the smell of wet dirt in the  morning is invigorating, and comforting. The birds have returned from their southern sojourn, the daffodils are in full flower, and the woods behind our house have that telltale chartreuse fuzz at the tips. Spring is popping.

I loved it as a city kid, like I love it now. Our corner of the Bronx could almost pass for the suburbs, if caught from the right angle.  Our 21-story apartment building had a playground, and the playground was surrounded with a high forsythia hedgerow and little cherry trees. My mother, the biologist, made sure I knew the names of the plants, the birds, the butterflies. We had Field Guides to everything, and binoculars to match.

I thank my mother for teaching me to notice nature around me. And to see the different contributions that the plants and creatures make to our surroundings. I've spent most of my life crediting her, and her naturalist/herbalist father, with my appreciation of the natural world. I have that connection with her still, as we compare notes in each other's gardens.

So I was startled to discover that my father's grandmother was an avid gardener. A fact I learned from an old family photo that I recently discovered. A middle-aged black woman, in house dress and apron, in a vast Victorian-era garden behind the little Massachusetts house I know to be her own. The photo must be from the Twenties or Thirties, and the garden is lush, and layered with mature plantings, obviously the product of many years of diligent work.

I had never seen a house-proud American black woman in her own beautiful garden, from any time period.

I'm sure there must be some images out there. But what comes to mind of course is slave imagery, sharecropping imagery, and some farming imagery from modern times. Where is the disconnect?

My father loved his garden. He called it a yard, but it was an acre around his house on Long Island. He carefully designed and maintained the landscape, and enjoyed raking the sea of leaves that dropped every fall. He planted a gorgeous cut leaf maple in honor of Duke Ellington's birthday one year. And marveled at the full six-foot height of the junipers, which were smaller than four-year-old me when he put them in.

Most of my friends would rather not touch dirt. Or bugs. I suspect it has more to do with having grown up in the city than with any race-related phenomenon. But I can't help but question whether a wall came down as blacks moved north, separating us from "our agricultural past".

I relish the quiet work of gardening. It's an active connection to my American Indian heritage, and my grandfather the herbalist, and  my father with his rake, and my great-grandmother in her Massachusetts garden, and the countless unknown ancestors' connections to the land.

In these lean, green times, I hope to see more of us getting down in the dirt.