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It was December, and the garden was covered in snow, when we received the news that our landlords were ending our tenancy to move back into the house. Reeling, my husband and I stood together in the white, sleeping garden. I brushed some snow off the branches of a spicebush that I’d planted three summers before.
“But, what about my rhubarb?” I sniffled. I started sobbing on my husband’s shoulder. That morning we took turns crying. As renters, you know it can happen at any time, but that doesn’t lessen the shock.
This little house had been my family’s home for seven years. The first house I’d ever lived in after 20 years of many apartments. What is much more, this was my first garden.
I’ve always had green fingers, ever since reading The Secret Garden as a child. All my apartments were crammed with potted plants on every windowsill and balcony. When my daughter was little, I got permission from her daycare to create a garden on a disused patch of yard in front of their building. I grew sunflowers that the children could see through the windows.
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But here, for the first time, was soil I could really sink my hands into. I could literally and figuratively put down roots.
I could plant rhubarb.
It had been a joke between me and my husband. Though hated by everyone else in the family, rhubarb, that deliciously tart pie-fruit, had always been my favourite, and through all our apartment years I longed to plant it. But rhubarb is one of those tricky plants you plant this year but cannot harvest until next year. Rhubarb needs space and it needs time (two things I never thought I had). When we moved into this house, rhubarb was the first thing I planted.
There was nothing here at first, just grass, but my landlords raised no objection to my request to put in beds. It started with a modest front bed, but soon multiple raised beds were added. Later, I terraced the hill to put in pollinator plants, found space for fruit trees and a raspberry patch, all with the landlord’s blessing. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, instead of online kindergarten, my daughter and I would plant vegetables and meet our neighbours as they passed by on daily walks. After seven years, there’s hardly any lawn left, and I’ve become just like little Mary Lennox from my childhood book when she petulantly declared, “I’ve stolen a garden! And I won’t give it back!”
On that sad, snowy morning, my husband looked out at the memorial trees we planted for departed friends as tiny saplings. He rubbed his hand over his heart and said, “You know, this feels exactly like being dumped by a lover!”
He was right. I looked around at the years of love I’d sunk into this dear little patch of earth, contemplated the hours of labour I put into carving the terraces, carrying water from the rain barrel, coaxing seedlings and hauling compost. Just like at the end of any relationship there came that moment of despair when I said, “Never again! I can’t do it again! I can’t build all this again just to lose it!”
It sounded childish, even as I said it.
Writer and activist Dan Savage always said that you should leave a lover the way you leave a campsite – better than you found it. The same is true for gardens. You cannot own or steal a garden, or a person. We do not love people so that we may own them. But loving them might make both of us better; might make us better at loving next time.
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It is summer now, and we move out in a couple of weeks. The lupin have finally started self-seeding, the Eastern redbud is flowering for the first time and the rhubarb could do with a bit more compost. It feels bittersweet (like rhubarb pie) that something I have loved so intensely is soon to be mine no longer.
But it never was.
We never really own land. We only ever care for it, love it and hope (like lovers) that it is better for us having loved it. I know the bees and butterflies will continue to feed on the flowers I planted. The birds will find seed heads to eat in the winter and trees to build homes in next spring. My neighbours will still be able to enjoy it as they walk past.
As for myself, I know that I am so much better for having had this relationship. Through loving my garden I’ve found so many other things to care about. Neighbours have become friends, conversations turned into invitations, gatherings and seed swaps. I’ve joined environmental groups, building pollinator gardens in local schools and libraries. My daughter has a hands-on understanding of where her food comes from and can teach you how to revive a tired bee.
Just because it didn’t last forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. Love is never wasted. I know I will put my roots down again somewhere. It might take a bit of time, but I’m a tough perennial and this lover has taught me so much!
Sarah Joy Bennett lives in Toronto.