I don’t consider myself a gardener. I say I’m the laborer to my wife’s gardening. I grew up with a shaded yard, so my mother’s feeble attempts didn’t yield much. She had a rock garden though, but I don’t remember much about it. My grandmother was quite the gardener. She had a terraced back yard, which I thought was so cool. The first slope was garden and I can envision my grandmother standing on the slope or bending over…something. No idea what she had. The first terrace, up a flight of stone steps, had a swing set and mowed grass. No idea how my grandfather managed that. The third terrace, though, was the best. Wild. With a fruit tree and tangles of god only knows what but good for a fort.

As you can see, I paid no attention.

So when my wife wanted to put in a garden at our first house, I didn’t think much of it. We dug out the bed, which was harder than you can imagine since we discovered our house had been built on the buried rubble foundation of an old school. I’m talking rocks! But we were young and we prevailed.

Then, to my shock, after all the plants were nestled into their spaces and started to grow, the next year my wife wanted to move them around. What? Move plants? Doesn’t “planting” mean they stay put? Apparently not.

Gardening, it turns out, is more like chess. Strategic moves are required when a plant that was supposed to be short grows tall and needs to move back. Likewise the shorty at the back must come forward. Then there are the “it’s too wet here” or “too dry there” moves.

I had no idea.

But I got used to it. She did most of the work anyway. When we moved, I sort of knew what to expect, but this property is an order of magnitude larger and we’re planting trees and shrubs as well as perennials. Six years on and we’re still putting in new stuff and she’s moving around old stuff. We have an agreement, though. I plant them. I don’t move them.

This being New England, for every hole dug, a dozen or so rocks come out. Some very large, like stonewall large. Most are smaller but big enough to stymie a shovel.

When it came time to replace a collapsing raised terrace/patio, my wife the geology nut wanted stone, local Goshen stone, a kind of mica schist. It looks great (I wrote about that in 2022) and we kept a lot of the leftovers. That’s where the planting rocks comes in. I’ve just spent two days sinking nine flat stones into the ground for a walkway. There are a lot more to go.

There’s a Zen aspect to planting rocks. I don’t even feel the need to listen to music. The stones have been sitting on the ground since last fall, so the grass (if you can call it that; mostly weeds) is dead. Every stone I lift reveals something interesting. Curled up grubs hatched from eggs laid last summer and expected to be able to climb out as Japanese beetles and terrorize our veggies. What a surprise they’d find to feel a rock roof overhead. There are also a few earthworms and a rather large ant nest. And gravel. Lots of gravel left over from the patio base (that was put in by pros; I’m not insane).

To plant the rocks, I stand on one and cut an outline with my edger. Then I move it—most are small and easy; the first was big and horrendous. Needed a crowbar for that. I set the stone aside, peel back the grass/dirt edge, and dig out enough dirt so the stone will sit flush. They might sink in time, but the ground is so compacted, maybe not. Wiggle and fidget and fill and shape and smooth and pack and get the stone back in place so it isn’t tippy and the edge that could catch a hose isn’t raised. Then fill in around with dirt, tamp it down, stand on to test the solidity. Sweep off stray dirt. Admire the accomplishment, and move on to the next one.

The phoebe sitting in her nest watches but does not judge.

The physical exertion exhausts me but also invigorates me, improving my mood (see last post. Sigh).

When I was young, I imagined a career doing something, anything outdoors. I’m a huge fan of Anne LaBastille, and while I couldn’t imagine building my own cabin in the wilderness, I longed for a life outdoors, in nature. It didn’t work out that way. Decades of urban desk jobs paid the bills and made it possible for me to finally move to the country and get back to the physical labor I’d so craved. The world may be going to hell and I most definitely have the privilege of not caring much about that. (Yet.)

We’ve planted trees we won’t live long enough to see bear fruit (or nuts). But we’re in it for the long haul. We rebel against entropy, knowing that without sustained effort, this land we’re returning to a habitat of young forest and thickets good for wildlife will not only revert to dense forest, but also be overrun with invasive nonnative trees and shrubs that can’t support local wildlife.

How long we can maintain this effort remains to be seen, but like the birds I watch come and go each spring and fall, spending their days hunting insects and avoiding predators, I’m living in the moment.

My science fiction is as much climate fiction as space adventure, even though much of it takes place in space, or at least not on Earth. I am always lured into having my characters walk land, feel the air, and care deeply about what happened and what might have been different. This planet is precious and if the billionaires want to go to Mars and live in a hermetically sealed habitat, by all means, get the hell out of here. The rest of us need this “pale blue dot,” as Carl Sagan called it.