Seeker Magazine

The Magic Garden

by David J. Milligan

"Preamble"
... and it all started with that strange dream I had years ago about a cornucopia, a space capsule, and lots of vegetables. I know, where's the connection? But dreams have no logic; they conjure up whatever they will. And there were these two old people: man and wife.

"The Seed"
1986. Spring. Desperate for some extra cash. Answered an ad posted at the university for a part-time "yardworker". So I phoned the given number. It wasn't far away - a suburban house, next to an airforce base - about a 20 minute bus ride. So I hopped aboard and went to see two old folks. Man and wife. Thus began our magic garden...

"Yardworker"
Before you can make a garden, you have to prepare the soil. This was the "wall" we had to overcome. In a nutshell, the old man and I turned the soil, roto-tilled it, pulled out intrusive tree roots and countless rocks and pebbles, weeded it, fertilized it with manure and peat moss, then marked off rows with sticks and string. What you'd call a "prep" job. The pace was slow, like my employer, but relaxing.
It made the old man feel good to see the old vegetable garden coming to life again. He told me that because of his age and failing health, he'd kind of left it alone for the last couple of years. His own children couldn't help much because they were at a distance or busy with families of their own.
Over the next four summers, I became not only a yardworker and apprentice gardener, but a kind of surrogate grandson as well. As for myself, never having met my own grandparents, the old man and his wife helped to fill that void in my life. Until that spring when I was hired on, the lack of elders in my family left me feeling subconsciously lacking in something essential: a psychic anchor, if you will. I had grown up in a speedy, instantly gratifying, youth-worshipping culture which affected my overall attitude to life. The old couple represented something different, a contrast: growing old, memories, patience, endurance and devotion. Timeless qualities in the midst of a whirlwind of change.

"Portraits"
The old man had a face like a moose. Seriously. And, strangely enough, when he was relating his past exploits and favourite memories to me, moose-hunting in northern Ontario was among them. He never spoke of the World Wars, but he had lots to say about everything else under the Sun. He spoke slowly and with economy, and his hearing was pretty good. His major communication problem was with his kind-hearted but somewhat senile wife, who, in spite of feminism, still served her husband like an old prairie pioneer wife (they had lived in suburban Toronto for years, but had spent some of their younger days in Saskatchewan).
The old woman lived hermit-like in their house, with the shades drawn and the constant murmur of television voices. She was a great cook; no "New Age" gourmet fare but the kind of food that "stuck to your ribs": roasted meats, boiled vegetables, salad and bread. Or soup and a sandwich or beans and wieners for lunch. I know this because they paid me for my labour in a much more personal way than mere wages; at noon and at 5 o'clock ("quitting time"), I was invited into their house for a meal. Sometimes the old man would scold his wife for overdoing the meat or leaving an element on the stove, but I'd try to divert their attention to something like, say, the similarity between their food and that which my own mother served my family.

"Spring Cleaning"
I'm fascinated by the things people have collected over the years, especially older folks, since they often possess items I never saw in a store. Once, during those four years, the old man had me help him organize and clean out the contents of a room on the main floor of the house, which was seldom used for anything but storage purposes. Certain things particularly caught my attention. Correspondence spanning decades: the couple's chronicles. Neat stacks of Canadian Tire "funny money."* Outdated children's games, ones which were at the "leading edge" when they were first marketed.
And one thing I'll never forget, which became a gift to me. The old man gave me about three-quarters of a carton of fairly antique Sweet Caporal cigarettes. Needless to say, even inside the cellophane packaging, the tobacco was pretty dry. Nonetheless, after dinner I headed down to the Native Friendship Centre on Spadina with my cargo, and ended up sitting on the front lawn of the building handing out packs of cigarettes. It was gold to me, and a golden end to a day.
(* Canadian Tire - a nation-wide hardware store chain and Canadian institution for decades - has for many years given out discount coupons to customers which have denominations like $1, 50 cents, 25 cents, etc; thus the term "funny money.")

"The Robin"
The robin came to the old couple's back yard every spring. Or so the old man would have you believe. Often when we were working on the garden together, he would stop what he was doing and listen to the bird's melodious song.
"He seems to like this place," he'd say. "Comes back every spring." His complete conviction that this was true made me suspend my own disbelief and enjoy the idea that the robin had designated this small piece of land as a special place. The bird's presence made the work seem more meaningful, not just labour but part of a cycle, a rhythm, a connection with the natural world.

"Reflections"
I think when I work seriously at something now, I find it helps to remember one of the old man's sayings:
"When you get tired of one thing, move on to another, then go back to what you were doing before."
It was one day, before dinner, sitting watching "Cheers" on the TV with them, that I recalled the dream I'd had about 5 years earlier which had both amused and perplexed me. I always wonder about dreams that contain people I don't recall meeting. But now I knew that the strange old couple I'd dreamt about were sitting Here and Now right beside me.
I liked the flexibility of my gardening job, because in the late '80s I was living a somewhat crazy life and had trouble following the routine of a regular job. Usually I worked on weekends (unless it was raining, though sometimes the old man would call me up in the middle of the week if some specific matter had to be attended to. I did more than gardening and cutting the grass; I also washed windows, did small painting touch-ups, trimmed the rose bush, emptied the eaves-troughs, and various other things. I once even had to overcome my fear of heights and crawl up an extendible ladder to trim the upper branches of a tall tree at the back of the property (placing blind faith in the old man watching the base of the ladder).
I spent most of my time working in the back yard; nevertheless, the front part kept me busy at times, too. The lawn was smaller, and for some odd reason (there must have been some logic to it) the old man had me use an old electric mower with cord. I never liked it as much as the powerful gas mower I used at the back. First, I always found the cord a hassle to deal with: flipping it this way and that to avoid running over it, and secondly, it had a bag that had to be constantly emptied (when I mowed the back, I used no bag; I just took a rake to the piles of clippings - a separate job in itself).
There was also a hedge which served as a barrier between the couple's property and an old brownstone apartment block adjacent to it, and once in a while I'd give it a "haircut" with the electric hedge clippers. Hard-to-get-at spots in both yards and at the sides I tackled with a "weedeater," which unfortunately consumed the nylon trimming cord as quickly as the grass and weeds it was supposed to cut.
Yes, variety kept the job from being monotonous. I felt a certain possessiveness about my yardwork, partly because I'd found out about it on my own (unlike many other jobs to which I'd been connected by friends or relatives). Even though the pay was low - "kid's wages" I'd mutter to myself when I got caught up in comparing myself to full-time, unionized labourers I knew - the meals the old woman provided and the concern the couple sometimes expressed at times about my overall progress - or lack of it - in life, gave my job a personal aspect so absent in the myriad of "temp" jobs I held during those years in the city's core.

"Those Darned Roots"
Every spring, for the four years I was there working that garden, the tree roots would come back. "Those darned roots," the old man would mutter, looking at me with a mixture of irritation and wry amusement. I found a creative - and therapeutic - way of dealing with the roots that held up our progress. I would summon up every evil that seemed to be plaguing my life and project my negative feelings onto those roots. I especially enjoyed dealing with the thick, cord-like roots that could not be torn out by hand. They required the use of a small hatchet, and each time I chopped off one of these roots, I imagined I was beheading some ominous foe. A barbaric sentiment, perhaps, but it did make me feel better. During the last season I worked there, the old man, in contempt, had his son come down from the suburbs with his chain saw, and that was the end of the offending tree: reduced to a stump and a pile of dust.

"Abstinence"
The old man liked his tobacco, though he had to quit during the last year of his life - you know, oxygen machine and all - and I liked the "smoke breaks" we took together on the patio while gardening, for this is when I got to hear many of the old man's anecdotes. But aside from some beer empties I saw while doing the spring cleaning, I never saw any liquor in the house. One breezy summer afternoon, during one of our smoke breaks, I asked him if he'd ever drank.
"Used to," he said with a chuckle. "Problem was, every time I went to the liquor store to get a six-pack of beer, I'd come out with a quart of whiskey as well. So I decided the only way to deal with the problem was to not go in that store at all".

"More Reflections"
Can self-expression enter into routine vegetable gardening? I liked to think so during those four seasons. Sometimes, in the course of what seemed tediousness, I would stand back and look at our "good work." Then I would see it: a tangled, rocky, lifeless patch of earth transformed into a "soil canvas" ready to be coloured with carrots, zucchinis, beans, beets, tomatoes, radishes. This was no "showcase" garden meant to impress the passer-by, but it, instead, possessed a beautiful imperfection, a reflection of the old man's personality and perhaps that of his helper too. The old man demanded a certain amount of order in life - as when he scolded his wife at dinner sometimes for overcooking the meat - but he liked a few "rough edges" to reality as well, like quitting early some days just because he felt like it even though he would pay me as if we had worked right up to the usual "quitting time."

"The Root Cellar"
One room in the basement was designated by the old man as the "root cellar." The first time he told me to go look for something there, I had to ask him which room he meant. Of course, it occurred to me finally. If you had been a pioneer on the Saskatchewan prairie, prior to the days of self-defrosting refrigerators, you would have stored your "root" vegetables like potatoes, beets, and carrots in a cool, dark place.
It was the old man's everyday use of such anachronistic terms that lent colour to his character. Thus it became easy for me, by extension, to think of our gardening activity as magic gardening, another anachronism I had come across once in some "mystical" book (one of many I had eagerly digested in the late '80s). It was actually the Natives, with whom I spoke frequently in Toronto, who directly imparted to me a sense of the sacredness of the earth, a concept lost on modern people for whom the earth is just a huge commodity to be freely exploited.
As the years went by I would discover that my own Anglo-Celtic ancestors had once revered the soil they worked and, in some small pockets, still did. It seemed that the old man kept this notion alive in an entirely unaffected manner. Thus his "root cellar" was authentic; not part of some romanticized "retro" fad so popular with many aging "baby boomers." I think if I ever have a house and a garden of my own, I'll have a "root cellar" too, if only to carry on one of the old man's traditions.

"The Metric System"
Speaking of anachronisms, the old man didn't think much of Canada's new "metric system." It had come into being by federal legislation passed a few years earlier under the Trudeau Liberals to replace the old system (you remember: miles, quarts and pounds?) in a move to "modernize" Canada. The old man still found it hard getting used to it. We discussed this issue one day before dinner, as his wife listened intently.
"It's just made it all so damned confusing," he said. "I mean, when I want to buy cheese, I know what a pound is. Then I know what I'm getting for my money. Now with this metric stuff - kilograms and all - I don't know what I'm getting. Damned politicians. If I had my way, I'd be able to ask for a hat full of cheese!" The old woman laughed heartily.

"Sundays"
I liked working Sundays because it gave me pocket money for the "Sunday Night Jam" at Grossman's Tavern - corner of Cecil and Spadina beside Kensington Market - on Toronto's downtown west side. I never told the old folks I was going there; I didn't want them to get the wrong ideas about me (even if they were true). Yes, noisy, bawdy Grossman's in the mid '80s was a real contrast to the pastoral stillness of the old couple's yard. Many of the younger patrons and some of the musicians themselves were day labourers like myself.
Swirl of smoke and beer glasses and raucous chatter. A whiff of the good stuff. A cacophony of everybody from derelicts to high-rollers banking on an evening of soul-soothing rhythm and blues. The thread of Mississippi Delta feeling - from Muddy Waters to Bo Diddley - woven through the hands of youngbloods eager to make their mark "on the scene." A blind blues guitarist named Jeff Healey announces into the microphone that he's going to give a break to a quite-teenage-looking girl with a wild mane of curly hair who proceeds to bring Janis Joplin back to life for the audience. Amanda Marshall. And the parade went on. Jeff. Danny Marks. Mike MacDonald. Carlos del Junco. Pat Rush. Morgan Davis. Gail Ackroyd. Once in a blue moon Holly Cole or what was left of the Downchild Blues Band.* And I with my gardener's wages was able to sit up front at the centre table, taking it all in.
(*NOTE: These are all "major players" on the Toronto R&B scene)

"Cornucopia"
Remember at the beginning I mentioned a somewhat prophetic dream I'd once had? Through the haze of memory I recall only a backyard, a garden, a space capsule that was parked right in the middle of the garden, and a cornucopia bursting forth with vegetables. And, of course, an old couple who seemed to wish me well. Meeting the old couple was one coincidence. Yet there was one other "coincidence" which triggered in me a sense of deja vu.
That first day in 1986 when I got off the bus on a main drag in northwest Toronto, I passed by a small plaza when I turned off onto a side street. Right at the corner of the plaza was a somewhat nondescript eatery with dark windows where, I came to discover, local toughs hung out for a burger and a few beers. The eatery was called THE HORN OF PLENTY, and the sign had a big cornucopia on it. Strange. However, I don't think I'll ever know what the space capsule meant.

"Up the Garden Path"
As I already stated, my work hours with the old man were flexible. Once, however, I did try his patience a bit. Saturday was approaching, and I knew that - if the weather was right - he wanted to put fresh sealant on the driveway (he did this every year to cover up encroaching cracks). However, the night before, as a result of a visit to Grossman's Tavern, I ended up in a fairly amorous position with a Native lady in a deserted boxcar in the East End rail yards. I stayed in her humble home overnight and awoke somewhat dazed and disoriented in the morning.
The sky that day was almost cloudless, just right for the job to be done (of course, I was praying for rain so it would be called off). It wasn't until about noon that I got up the nerve to call my employer to say I would be late (even though I had a habit of doing this, it always mortified me to let people down).
The old woman answered, "Hello?"
"Hi, it's Dave," I said sheepishly. "Uhm ... does your husband still need my help?"
"Yes," she said, with an unusual scolding tone in her voice. "He's kind of disappointed."
"I'll be right up" I said and hung up.
I made it there by about 2 P.M. It worked out all right though. I didn't tell him where I'd been. He chastised me a little, and then it was business as usual.

"Harvest"
The annual gardening wound down from the last week of August to about the third week of September. It was a bittersweet time; one of my only secure sources of income was evaporating until the following spring - like all seasonal work - but also a time of culmination and fulfillment. Aside from the most pleasing task - the harvesting of the garden's leafy gifts - there were other timely activities such as raking leaves, replacing storm windows removed for the summer, and one somewhat unique to the old man: digging up some of the flowers, like the geraniums, and transplanting them into window boxes to be stored indoors.
We had great suppers at the end of the growing season. Having grown up in a modern suburban area of the 1960s, where the old farmers' markets had been usurped by homogeneous supermarket stores, I found it refreshing to eat vegetables straight from the garden. Carrots, zucchinis, beans, beets, tomatoes, radishes, all were fresh and rich in flavour. I must add that the old man did possess a definite "green thumb." Even adding a generous quantity of manure and peat moss to the garden every spring, it was still no small feat to coax healthy, productive plants out of the heavy, clay-laden soil of southern Ontario. Perhaps for the old man, aware that time was running out slowly for him, it was his last willful act of self-affirmation.

"Farewell"
My last conversation with the old woman was in the spring of 1990. Itinerant as usual, I'd called up the couple to see if it was time to start the gardening yet.
"Oh Dave," she said, "there won't be any garden this year."
"Oh?"
"I'm afraid my husband passed on this week. Thanks for calling though."
A few days later, past dusk, I sneaked up to the darkened house, slipped through the gate to the back yard, and buried a handful of tobacco in the fallow soil of the magic garden. It was a hybrid ritual; a Native symbol of gratitude mixed with my own words of remembrance. Then I left the profound silence and headed back towards the glare of the city's lights.

I dedicate this to the memory of Robert and Grace Clark.

(Copyright 2000 by David J. Milligan - No reproduction without express permission from the author)

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Letter to the Author:
David J. Milligan at wy605@victoria.tc.ca