04. Grub
It’s no longer dark when I make it into the office.
The blinds shield me from the harsh glare of the midday sun as I sit down at the desk, reluctantly pulling them up with the knotted string. Warm light spills in through the thin pane – vibrant green and a washed-out blue fill the window, the colours of summer. As I open my laptop, my attention immediately slips towards the beaten-up shrub next to my window. The latest summer storm tore it apart, leaving the resident Loggerhead Shrike to retreat to the overgrown and neglected garden bed beside it.
The silvering wood, half of a cracked bird bath, and two dead pineapple plants sit in the thicket of weeds. That’s all that grows there, with the exception of baby lizards and black racers. It’s been on my to-do list since we bought the house three years ago. The garden bed, nestled into the corner of our back patio and only visible from the office window, has forever sat dishevelled and, more recently, turned into an outdoor dumping ground. Now that I stare at it, I am quietly washed with shame given the state that it's in.
If my office were a bedroom, would I change the state of the garden bed so that my future child wouldn’t have to look at such a wreck? I think of what I would plant there.
As I stare at the garden bed, as though I could grow a green thumb overnight. One of the pineapple plants isn’t as dead as I thought. A strong, thick, crown is sprouting against the wild weeds.
I dash out of the office, through the sliding glass door in the kitchen and feel the hot sting of the sun-soaked concrete beneath my bare feet. The shrike perches himself on the neighbour’s fence, eyeing me curiously as I, with equal curiosity, eye the pineapple plant that is thriving under my neglect. When the neighbours gave me the plant as a preemptive thank-you for collecting their mail last summer, it had the beginnings of a tiny pineapple that was quickly ravaged by squirrels. Into the garden bed it went with no hope for revival. No carefully planned repotting, no schedule watering schedule, not even a single worm or grub to churn through the pact, nutrient-deficient, soil. Yet, here the plant was, daring to grow against all odds.
I stare at it, bewildered. In doing nothing, I did exactly what I was supposed to do. If I had bothered to research the next step to revive the plant, I would have been considerably more paranoid about it, undoubtedly watching the damn thing like a hawk and almost certainly interfering with it.
I sit down on the hot concrete next to the garden bed. The blazing sun scorches my scalp as a thick breeze drifts by. The crown is solid, strong, and unshaken by the damp, muggy, conditions. It would seem that one of us was built for this sort of climate.
