The Persistence of Green

Ever since the lockdown, my morning routine has been to read the newspapers, eat breakfast with my wife, and take a long walk through Greynolds Park, where I usually write a haiku or two, and then I head back home for lunch.

However, just before my walk, I am greeted by a swell of green outside my front door—a 6 x 2‘ space between the laundry room and the walkway in my otherwise grim condo. In this narrow gap, I’ve planted anthuriums with heart-shaped leaves and crimson flowers, brightening the shady patches; Peace lilies that smell sweet after gentle rain though their dangling roots are beginning to outgrow their pots; roses that shyly reveal vibrant yellow centers as they open into fragrant blossoms, and yucca with spear-like spines and hairy filaments that tower over the other plants.

Except for the yucca, which I bought as a 4” sapling at a thrift store, most of the plants were gifts--like when I lived in Jamaica, and my parent’s friends would exchange seeds and cuttings from their backyard gardens. The anthuriums were a gift from my friend, Malachi Smith; my sister-in-law, Tathiana, gave me the roses; and the Peace lilies were a present from my sister, Judith, who passed on some good advice when I noticed some brown spots on the leaves: “Try Epsom salts. It works like a miracle.”

She was right. And tending to the garden has been miraculous with the record-breaking weather in South Florida. In July, we had the most persistent heatwaves with heat indices over 105°F. Then, between December 16th and 17th, we had over 5 inches of rain during what is supposed to be our dry season. Needless to say, all of this has made me more attentive to the effects of climate change on my plants, especially the roses. As my neighbor Mr. Silvera once said before he left Jamaica during our undeclared civil war, “Roses like to get their feet wet, but they don’t like sitting with soggy bottoms.”

Yet the roses are still alive, which is a constant surprise to my sister-in-law, for she had given up on them. “How do you keep them going?” she often asks. I usually tell her a story about my grandfather’s farm in Westmoreland and his green thumb. But that's not 100% true.

The truth is, it’s the garden that has kept me going. Whenever I’ve felt like giving up, especially after reading the newspapers with headlines about floods in Taiwan, droughts in the Amazon, and Jakarta sinking into the sea—enough to make me want to quit it all and say, “What’s the point? We’re screwed anyway!”—I look at my orchids.

I didn’t tell you about my orchids with their trumpet-shaped blossoms freckled with splashes of yellow and white along their purple throats? They’re gorgeous! They give me the courage to sign another petition, march in another climate protest, clean up another habitat, and teach another nature-centered haiku class to kids in elementary schools--be awestruck at midday by their transient beauty. The orchids also fill me with hope—a farmer’s hope that somehow, some way, we'll make it through despite ourselves.

When headlines numb

and my hands droop to my side,

my garden awaits