I garden in the air.
Three floors and 6200 feet above sea level.
I can’t recall anyone I know within miles who has a garden connected directly to the earth. There must be someone. I just don’t know them.
Gardens at different heights for different reasons and occasions, three to be exact.
The largest of the three, the Manhattan garden transports me to New York City’s Central Park in the distance. This one looks over the magical town of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico’s highlands.
“Come join us for dinner”, someone called.
I was new in town. The voice came from an impressive artist, standing on his Juliette balcony. He and his longtime partner allow oleanders, bougainvilleas, and succulents to splurge, to hang and wave from their four story garden.
From the couple’s cattery treads a Siamese, resting on the ledge. He surveys the neighborhood in early evening’s light, ignoring the bright yellow Great Kiskadee chatting loudly with a mate in the nearby waving palm.
Months later, I look past the heirloom tomatoes ready in a few days for harvest.
Every plant, every bloom, every seed and branch originates in a container. One pound coffee cans, five gallon white paint buckets, rust colored terracotta pots of all sizes line the rooftop edges. I must be careful not to lean too far, lest I topple off, splatter and move on to another life if I hit the cobblestones below me.
Over the other garden wall I toss mango rinds and scrap vegetables. An abandoned five story stone and cement ghost house hovers on that side of the wall. I dare not dream of how many gardens could arise from its floors and terraces, maybe a miniature form of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon..
My occasional scraps feed a resident possum family. In turn, they discourage scorpions and engage in other good actions, I tell myself. In truth, I like dropping the leftovers, checking later if any creatures have partaken of my largesse. Last week a hefty cat lounged in the area, perhaps waiting for a squirrel or the raccoon-like cacomistle who has been gnawing at my harvests. If anyone ever renovates the house, I’ll have to mend my ways. Until then, leftovers turn into compost. Someday an earthbound gardener may thank me.
Red and pink geraniums abound, starts broken off an older plant now creating new lives in a different pot. Sunflowers blooming before I left for a few weeks have given up and withered, like relationships when they are not maintained. An empty container awaits new seeds. While I’ve been traveling, garlic has developed scapes, a word new to me. Looking like Egyptian magic, their tall, white balls wave in the wind. I can’t bear to tear them out of the container. I need to read more so I know how best to handle them. They should not be wasted.
Research has been showing that rooftop gardens decrease pollution and noxious gases in the environment. A couple of European countries and Canada have been legislating that new commercial buildings have at least some rooftop garden amenity. Lessening pollution is only one benefit. Noise reduction, rain water usage, pollination locations and areas for birds and bees add to the benefits. Beauty they provide directly or at a distance is value-added.
Rooftop ventures haven’t stopped with hobby gardens. Hong Kong and Rotterdam are two cities now boasting of rooftop farms. At least one manufacturer sells robotic lawn movers to mow tall grasses. Enterprising folk now offer collection and distribution of compost in urban areas.
Returning home from weeks of traveling, I marveled at how strong the Italian parsley looked, brilliant emerald, full and ready to be photographed. Or eaten. I was eager to use it, maybe dehydrate, saving some for another day. Alas, by the next day only a memory remained, a nighttime delicacy for my neighborhood cacomistle, the varmint that consumes too many Mexican gardens, rooftop or not.
Lavender that last year looked stagnant and dull now blossoms, providing fine fodder for the bees. I remind myself to buy more, to create an entire lavender corner, encouraging more bees to feast.
Three white five gallon buckets line up next to one another, wire housing wrapped around one of them. Hours of YouTube watching helped my partner confirm he packed soil at exactly the right level and consistency. All promised a healthy potato harvest…until another nighttime raid ruined two of the three harvests.
Time for replanting, I tell myself.
I begin with pink cosmos, a few sugar peas, and zucchini, the green vegetable that never stops giving. I pull out the old pea shards, follow a recipe for cooking them, then serving them under a bed of couscous for the Sunday evening meal with friends. Tolerable, I conclude, but not prize winning, adding color but little interest for my guests.
Flowers and vegetables intertwine here, like nearly everything else. The garden serves as a yoga center for me and a neighbor. We share the Manhattan deck. He keeps his yoga mat, century plants and cactus on one side. I stay to my side. Winds sometimes sweep our mats into other places and once, onto the cobblestone street below.
Standing on my right foot, creating tree pose, I look fifteen miles to the Sierra Madre, the mountains giving contrast to the flatlands around the area . By the time I finish a child pose, complete a couple of planks, and move into downward dog, I’m ready for the next garden.
I remind myself to water the bougainvillea, then descend thirteen steps to the Rose Garden. No press conferences will be held here, no photo ops are likely to occur. Nine terracotta containers with brightly colored roses grace the garden. Leaf cutter ants who two years ago inhaled the leaves and buds have vacated, thanks to banana peels placed nearby. I rub out a few aphids and snip a bright gold and pink rosebud, placing it in a small glass vase to give to my neighbor.
I don’t know the names of any of these roses I cherish. Nurseries where I purchased them include no names on the plants and I am inexperienced enough at rose growing not to be able to identify them. Their lack of names does not lessen my enjoyment of their beauty.
Neighborhood chickens cluck two doors up the street. I awaken to the sounds of their rooster, all of them living in the air and in their rooftop garden. I remember an earlier time when I had an earthbound chicken coop and roses. On Sunday mornings in California I joined the girls in the coop, sometimes picking up one or two, caressing their Rhode Island Red feathers and thanking them for the eggs I had gathered. On my return to the house, I clipped a Julia Child or Mr. Lincoln rose for a morning bouquet.
It is this Rose Garden where I come when I want to write, to think, to be. I sunbathe, sip my morning coffee or chat with the Inca doves whose schedule includes arriving half an hour before noon. I remember another place and time when I planted an expensive rose garden. Gophers ate the roots. Deer chomped the rosebuds. I was left with the thorns, a bit of a metaphysical joke on me, I surmised.
On other days I want to be away from anyone. I climb a circular metal staircase outside the casita to the third garden, the No Name Garden. I check that water is available for the doves and any other creatures passing by, migrating or nesting or stopping by for an evening happy hour drink.
Here in the sky, I touch the blooming jacaranda tree, its dropping leaves creating Spring purple carpets. I climb into the hammock, electronic book in hand, leaving all my worries on another floor. I am suspended in the garden, crowding the blooming azaleas, orange and lime trees, poinsettias known here as Nochebuena surviving, even thriving from Christmas three years ago. I tell myself for the hundredth time that I really should try the fireplace, so perfect to warm myself while watching the night sky. Moaning about the increasing avocado galls, I forget the fireplace, slide onto the chaise lounge and continue reading.
I hear voices, look across to another rooftop garden. A yoga class is starting. These same visitors arrive each year to practice yoga on the same rooftop garden, breathing in, breathing out as hummingbirds flit among the oleander blooms. I wave to them, then continue my reading. I really should get out my keyboard, I think, or join a Zoom group, action I took frequently in pandemic days. Instead I inhale a Martha Washington geranium and Google a succulent.
Directly in front of me and over a neighbor’s patio. Robert, a long time Zen practitioner squats and stretches each morning on the bright green artificial turf his landlord installed last year. He continues his morning meditative exercises. Other residents join him on the rooftop garden, sharing their late morning coffee.
“Buenos Dias”, I hear as another arrives to hang laundry next to the olive trees. We wave to one another, then return to our respective tasks, all completed high above the earth.
Over the schefflera or Australian umbrella tree, I see San Miguel’s Parroquia, the wedding cake church forming the centerpiece of the UNESCO town, a hot air balloon passing to the right of it. Should I trim the azalea or let it grow naturally, I ask myself.
Three egrets fly up the canyon. Each morning they glide in that direction. Never do I see them return to lodge overnight. Last year as the sun went down I caught millions of white faced ibises moving from east to west, blackening the sky as they swooped over the city. Each evening in pandemic times, sitting alone in the garden, I watched this performance, pondering if I should plant celery or cabbage.
Later when I walk down what I call Calle de dos burros or Two Burros street given it is wide enough only for two burros or one car, I feel eyes on me. Someone is watching my every step. Looking up, I see an Airedale sneaking through an open French door onto a Juliette balcony adorned with a bougainvillea and pomegranate wrapping themselves around the side of the building. Is that an espaliered apple tree and a young olive is in the early stages of production on that corner patio? Perfect shade, I conclude as the day warms.
The dog barks a greeting. I acknowledge the woof, telling him he is a handsome creature. He, too, is living his life in a garden in the air.
What I most love about your writing style Barbara is how it brings me right there with you, I’m right in the scene with you. Love, Richard