I’m trying to make a meadow in my yard. Which means I’m watering the weeds that grow anyway, and throwing some wildflower and ground cover seeds out every once in a while.
I’m sure it annoys some of my neighbors. One of them, at least, has a hobby of reporting my yard to the city for any sign of untidiness or inconsistent tending.
So I planted thistles, officially classified as a weed, on purpose.
I definitely wouldn’t call what I spend as much time as I can doing out in my yard as gardening. Puttering is a better word. I paint rocks and paving stones, and cups and bowls to be made into mushrooms, and little cement birds and bunnies. I glue teacups and saucers to each other, fill them with birdseed, and hang them on trellises. I water my little pots of flowers, and I water my weed meadow.
It’s a fine line between quirky and tacky, and I’ve never been very good at walking straight.
When my favorite cousin and I stayed with my grandma, who my cousins and I called Moque, but the rest of my own siblings called Grammie (see how I’ve always been a bit of a rebel?), we would get up a little before dawn and fill the animal feeders. Grain for the deer, seeds and nuts for the birds and squirrels, and little pots and basins of water scattered around the desert yard for all the creatures, including the coyotes and javelina families, and a bobcat or 2. In Cavecreek, Arizona, where my grandma’s sprawling house and property were, dawn and dusk were the main times we were able to be comfortably outside in July. So I didn’t mind too much being woken up early to help.
After we were done, we would go in and have breakfast and watch as the animals emerged among the lichen covered rocks, prickly pear, red butterfly weed and cane cholla. Moque standing at the sink with her coffee and looking out the window at all her favorite neighbors.
“Look, girls! Do you see that doe? She has a little fawn with her.”
In the evening, we repeated the ritual and sometimes sat on the porch and breathed in the cool air during a desert monsoon and watched the little kangaroo mice jumping around in the puddles.
Even though she had grown up in the very different landscape of Tennessee, she had learned all about the desert plants and how to best care for them. Any plant or bird you pointed out, she would be able to tell you something interesting about it. I loved the way she gardened. No straight lines or meticulously manicured garden beds. It all looked as if it was supposed to be there. Like the animals, it looked like the plants knew where they’d be appreciated and cared for, so that’s where they bloomed.
Looking through gardening magazines with Moque, she’d say, “I just like it when it looks more wild. Don’t you?” When she stated an opinion or preference, she usually punctuated it with, “don’t you?” which I used to see as pressure to agree, but now I see it as a reach for connection.
I went to school in northern Virginia from August 2003-May 2004. I call it my first freshman year of college, but none of my academic credits transferred to the University of New Mexico, where I finished my education. Which is just as well, since I failed most of my classes at the tiny conservative Patrick Henry College. It was more of a very stressful and expensive gap year.
Anyway, I’d never have said I loved the desert until I came back to New Mexico from Virginia. I loved the Sandia mountains where I grew up. I loved our sunsets. But I wouldn’t have jumped to my home state’s defense if someone accused it of being brown and backwards.
When my brother Blake came out to Virginia with my mom to help me move out of the dorms, he said to my mom, “Do you think hell is humid, too?” It was only the end of May, but already you couldn’t walk outside in the morning without being instantly sticky. There wasn’t the bare sun heat we were used to, where you can feel your skin starting to get crispy. But I would take that any day over the thick, engulfing humid air that seeped into my skin and settled like a soggy weight in my lungs. At least in the desert you can find some shade and actually get relief.
I was so refreshed when we returned to the vast skies and landscapes of New Mexico. The grass was literally much greener back east, but at what cost? I preferred the honest vulnerability of the sandy dirt and cacti. The scattered wildflowers bravely dancing in the wind and sun. Sure, most things are spiky, but at least you know what you’re getting when you look at them. Who knows what’s hiding under all that vegetation in other places? The cactus flowers, thistles, and even the ponderosa pines in the mountains stand boldly and say, “You’re welcome to admire my beauty, but I’m not going to let you uproot me without a fight.”
Probably the fact that that year at PHC had been one colored by deep depression, disappointment, and shame had contributed to the oppressive feeling that enveloped me there.
But also, the stickiness.
Moque died in 2020 when Covid made its way through the memory care home she was living in. I hadn’t seen her in years since she’d moved back to Arizona from my parents’ house. I’d spoken to her only a few times on the phone in that time. I was busy with my little kids and all our little undiagnosed diagnoses. And it was a little hard to talk to her. She was an anxious person, and she often voiced her worries concerning her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I was a young mother already wound up in so much fear and self-judgment that any hint of negativity or worry sent me spiraling in a mix of shame and angry defensiveness.
But lately I’ve been meeting her in my yard in the early mornings. I putter around and fill my silly little teacup birdfeeders. The person who lived here before us was obviously a gardener. The first year we lived here, I noticed that she had carefully planned for there to be something blooming throughout the year. I killed a lot of her plants right away. Sorry.
All I can do is keep a couple rose bushes and lilac trees alive, plus some flowers in pots. And my weeds, though I might end up pulling those up after all.
It’s nothing like Moque’s desert refuge in Cavecreek. But as I wander around with my coffee, greeting the sparrows and finches and my thistles, I talk to her, too. She feels closer than she has for a long time. If she’d been able to come here when she was alive, I probably would have made all kinds of apologies for how bad I am at keeping things nice and alive. But when I meet her in the mornings, she’s always smiling, her own coffee in hand.
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing your words and your life.
Oh Megan, thank you for this. Achingly beautiful. We needn’t do things just as our loved ones did to connect and appreciate who they were while sharing in their presence with who we are becoming. Thank you for showing us that. Poignant wisdom beautifully written.