I’m gonna try writing. It’s what I do. Even though I feel like crap.
I volunteered for a gardening event at Shelby Park today. I didn’t feel like doing it at all. I didn’t feel like doing anything at all, but as it goes with these things, you warm up to them, and then you’re glad that you did do them. Sometimes you just have to get in the groove. It was actually great that I had this to do today.
The crew was a surprisingly large and cheerful one. There was a naturalist woman named Emily that I have remembered, as she was about to start the TN naturalist program, and I talked to her about that, which she said was amazing. She had the true nature-lover and naturalist spirit, and she was interested in all of the things in the garden and the bugs.
Our host Hazel was a naturalist and knew everything in the garden and knew about all of the bugs, too. She was awesome.
There was another woman who was something of a comedian. She was awesome, and she knew about the things in the garden too. She was especially fond of passionflower and was really wanting to raise some. At one point, she was lovingly touching a strand of passionflower and speaking to it, telling it that it was so beautiful. She was cracking me up.
She told us that passionflower is colloquially known as “Maypop”. She ventured to say that it could be because it blooms in May, or has something to do with the flowers making a popping sound when they open (and unless it blooms multiple times a year, which I know plants do, they were just blooming now, so not sure if May blooms as well)… she said that she didn’t really know the lore, and that we would have to find a “real person” to ask. That became something of a running joke, as I immediately used it to riff off of, saying, “Yes, hello, I’m looking for a real person, yes, does anybody know someone who’s real, I really need to know the lore of the Maypop flowers!”
The garden at Shelby isn’t a big one, but it has some interesting stuff in it, and today I saw that it actually had way more going on than I even thought. But the one thing in that garden that I’ve seen and wanted to know about, today was my chance to ask about it, and I took my opportunity. There was a large, sprawling, low-to-the-ground bush, that is a subtle shade of blue, and although it doesn’t have visually striking flowers, and the flowers don’t even really look like flowers at all, the pollinators go crazy for it. As in, I’ve seen like 500 bugs on this bush at a time. They are literally swarming this baby. I’ve been wanting to know what this thing is for weeks now, and so I asked our host, Hazel, what it was, and she told me— Mountain Mint. A Tennessee native. Mountain Mint, how awesome.
She then said that it grows like crazy, and that she would give me some if I wanted it. And she did. She cut off a section, as all you really have to do with these kinds of plants is dig up a chunk, and she put it in a bucket and gave it to me. She gave some to another young guy too, who was very excited to have something to plant. This guy was entertaining me, because he had a real bro energy, and you could tell he was pretty much a novice, but he was really curious and enthusiastic. You love to see it. And him and I scored, majorly, with that Mountain Mint.
I was talking with the comedian lady about how I was learning that all you had to do was ask gardeners about their plants, and they would just give it to you. That they liked to give things to each other. I told her the story of when I was at Bates nursery just the other day, and had asked about the passionflower (maypop) and the worker had gone and grabbed me some seed pods and gave them to me. The comedian lady said, “Yeah, gardeners are real people.” And she said that there’s something in the soil, there’s a chemical in the soil that’s released when you’re gardening that just makes you cool. I thought that was funny.
It’s a very wholesome activity. It almost feels wrong how wholesome it is.
I felt that way with the master gardeners. They were two of the most wholesome people doing the most wholesome things that I had ever seen. I was really overwhelmed by the wholesomeness. Today, I felt like I was too dirty and unworthy, almost. Or that something is wrong with me, to be seeking out and participating in such wholesomeness.
The polar opposite of debauchery.
I took on the role of weeding, now being familiar with what is crabgrass and other grasses that we don’t need in our garden. Being able to identify what’s what is a skill. I could have gone with the strongmen to do mulch work, but as the one guy said, he wanted to do mulch work because he was afraid of pulling anything good out of the garden. And, I’ve done enough digging in my yard. I was not interested in lugging around giant wheelbarrows of mulch.
Pulling away at the grass, down in the ground, it was about twenty minutes, we had been working around this unique plant that Hazel told us was called Moonflower, when I suddenly spied an enormous green caterpillar. Enormous as in, like seven inches long. And fat. I commented on this to whoever was nearby, and they were very excited, it might have been Hazel. Well, there several more of these fatties, striking fat green caterpillars, and she said that she thought they were Hornworms. They had a spike on their butts, so that would make sense. They were going to town on the Moonflower, if that’s what it was.
I looked it up because it was such a cool plant, but I can’t tell if what I looked up as Moonflower was that plant or not. Hazel knew what she was talking about so I’m inclined to say it was. But anyway, as you can imagine, the hornworms were wildly popular. As you would expect for some marked, fat green caterpillars. I was proud that I had spotted them, I wonder if anyone would have. It took me twenty minutes of working around down in that area before I even saw them, and they had been right in front of my face that whole time. It just goes to show you the power of camouflage. They were the exact same dark green as the Moonflower they were on, and they were adhered to the stalks, so they didn’t stick out in any way. You had to look directly at them, not just a passing, sweeping glance with your eyes. I saw one that way, just taking a good hard look at the Moonflower, because it was cool.
You can see immediately that these guys are awesome.
The curious bro said, “But aren’t they bad? Aren’t they like pests or something?”
Hazel said, “They do what caterpillars do. If you’re attached to your plants, then yeah, they’re bad.”
They were chowing down on that Moonflower, but she didn’t mind.
There was a pretty girl here at the gardening event, I have to tell you. And she seemed to be interested in me.
She caught my eye immediately, and she was at my side as I walked around the room, examining the displays and curiosities. I had been looking for the snake in the snake tank, and I couldn’t find it. She was still next to me, and I said, “Where’s the snake?” And she said, “Right there,” and pointed it out. It was a cute and small snake, hiding under the rock water bowl. I said it was cute, and she agreed.
Then when we out in the garden, Hazel was giving us the rundown for what we were supposed to be doing, and I had hung back, the rest of the group funneling into the vegetable patch. This was now my chance to give this girl a good look, because I wanted to see if she really was pretty, and I saw her face clearly, and she was— and then she immediately noticed me and look back at me. I was caught, and I glanced away, but she didn’t seem to mind that. After Hazel was done speaking, she came over to join me in weeding the main garden bed.
It was me and her down there, ripping out that grass, and I wanted to talk to her, so I struck up a conversation. I asked her about gardening, about what we were doing… We talked for a little bit. She smiled me, and I saw again that she had a pretty smile. I couldn’t get much more out of her though, and then I after ten minutes of vigorous tearing, I started to get bored with that particular patch, and there was action going on around the garden (people making discoveries, CD Paddock showed up, I had to ask about the mountain mint…).
I had come back to my post, then meandered more, made jokes and etc., and this girl did laugh at some of the things I said. She didn’t really engage with anybody else there, that I saw. She was quiet. And I didn’t try to talk to her much more, although I did make some comments, such as that we had moved on to the tougher to pull grass, and I said, “Now this is harder work,” as I had commented before on how easy it was to pull out the grass in the mulch. She laughed, but no reply.
So, I was talking with the comedian woman, we were the last ones left, having gotten our mountain mint, Hazel was still in the garden doing work, and we walked up the steps and back through the nature center, and I saw that this girl was still in the center, the only one left, buying something. I walked through, said goodbye to the lady at the desk, the comedian woman had stayed behind, and I was walking back to the parking lot, when the pretty girl called out to me from behind, “What are you taking home?”
I thought it was interesting that she was still hanging around, and I thought it was now very interesting that she was talking to me. I had a feeling that she would.
I told her, mountain mint. And I said that I had been curious about it, and asked about it and Hazel had just given it to me. The girl did not have much to say about it, I don’t know if I ever heard her response. It would have just been, “Oh,” or “That’s cool,” I guess. And then, I was just thinking, what does this girl want from me? Are we having a moment here? And I was thinking what to say next, and I was about to say, “What are your plans for the rest of the day?” When she said, “Well, have a good day.” And I said, “You too.”
I have to tell you, I’ve been thinking this one over. I’m not an egomaniac and am not assuming that every girl is interested in me, but there were cues. And especially at the end, she could have just let me walk away. I just couldn’t really get anything out of this girl. I didn’t know what to do with her! And then, as it goes, she’s gone. I’m sure I’ll never see her again.
I was thinking about it, because especially after her talking to me at the end, and then rather abruptly walking off, I was wondering about her. Was she just a quiet type? Was she nervous?
Mysterious.
What I was thinking about, during the gardening and as I write this, is the depth of subtlety of human connection. The subtle forces at play between people when they communicate, when they interact. Especially romantically. There all of these cues, currents and mechanics that are going on under the surface, with eyes and smells, body language, voice. So few words even spoken to one another, yet so much is communicated.
I also thought about how they say the way to make friends, and probably lovers too, is to see people repeatedly. These things take time. It can take awhile before you really know what someone is about, such as with this girl. What’s her story? I would like to know.
She was interested in planting natives in her garden.
That’s a good thing.
HAKUMUSU 