Beautiful Notion

The recent presidential inauguration had me thinking a lot about my grandma. From what I can remember, she was born in 1919. I always marveled at her resilience and determination. She lived through both World Wars, the Depression and the silicon revolution. She was the kind of woman who kept gold coins underneath the false bottom of the broom closet. She was a vegetarian. She was a political activist. She had a wood burning oven and a hot plate and she washed all her clothes by hand in the kitchen sink. By choice. She was a member of her local community garden. The members all shared the harvest, and then donated any left-overs to the local soup kitchen. How beautiful a notion.

I'm not really much of a gardener. Most of the plants I own, or have owned, have experienced the slow march towards mulch as their leaves turn brown and desiccated. And yet, my favorite class, ever, was 7th grade horticulture. We all got a triangle of land, seeds and tools. We got to take home everything we grew. I was 12 years old, sitting on the bus with a grocery bag full of kale, beaming with pride, because no one else had a bag of vegetables that they had grown. We made cheese, butter, and ice cream from fresh cows milk. We made sun-dried apple chips.

My forebearers have all kept gardens. But they all lived in the country. I live in sunny Southern California, where red tile roofs and peach stucco houses are found in neat rows along every visible ridge line. A place where I recently watched, while I sat in my SUV on the freeway, an estuary being filled in with dirt to make room for a new neighborhood.