Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

Hattie sat on the edge of the old wall to dip her hand into the water, while Aunt Bronwyn pointed to the narrow stone rill that carried the water out of the forest grove through the orchard for the cattle and finally to the river. There were a number of artesian springs in the vicinity of the river but not all of them were hot water like the springs that fed the baths.

“This is a very special place,” Hattie said. “I understand why you stay here.”

Aunt Bronwyn nodded her head with a merry expression on her face. Yes, the family did not understand her reasons for remaining in England after her husband died; after all, she was an American—“Whatever an American is,” Aunt Bronwyn said with a wink at Indigo. She’d fallen under the spell of the old cloister, which was nearly in ruins when she leased it from an English family that wanted fashionable locations in the heights of Bath away from the river and the mosquitoes, not to mention the crowds of tourists downtown or the odors of the baths.

Aunt Bronwyn had more she wanted to show them; a quick look now and they could return for a better look tomorrow. They followed the gravel path to the back of the old cloister along the high outer wall overgrown with ivies and wild clematis. Aunt Bronwyn pushed away the vines to reveal a narrow ironclad door in the wall; she gripped the iron latch firmly and pushed her shoulder hard against the door while she kicked it with her foot. The door seemed stuck for an instant before it slowly opened with the sound of wood dragging against dirt: she had to kick the door to get it open wider. The door was part of a late-eighteenth-century renovation. In the days of the Norman nuns, the cloister garden could be reached only through a door from the kitchen.

The late afternoon light scarcely penetrated the wild grove that shaded the back wall of the west garden. Fortunately the renovators of long ago did not tear out the old raised beds shaped in circles and rectangles — they merely buried them under topsoil. When Aunt Bronwyn began the garden restoration, workmen discovered the intricate river pebble borders and carefully unearthed and repaired them.

The low stone walls that divided the interior garden into four parts were planted with lavender; Indigo buried her face in the blossoms, while the parrot snipped off shoots with its beak. Hattie could see at once each quadrant was quite different from the others.

In the north quadrant, Aunt Bronwyn planted the old raised beds with indigenous English plants — kales, hellebores, dandelions, pinks, periwinkles, daisies. Little white flowering violets cascaded over the edges of the raised beds. The east side of the garden was planted with all the plants the Romans and Normans introduced: grapevines nearly obscured the weathered wooden pergola that slouched down the path between the raised beds planted with cabbages, eggplants, chickpeas, and cucumbers. Hattie was surprised at how few food crops and flowers were indigenous to England; the climate here did not seem unfriendly in the least as compared to the dry heat of Riverside.

The south garden and west garden were planted with plants from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. As soon as Indigo saw the tasseled corn plants along the back wall of the south garden ahead, she broke into a run that caused the parrot to flap his wings excitedly. Indigo stood before the corn plants, which were planted apart from one another — to let the sun reach all of them, she thought. At home they had to shade the plants and help them withstand strong winds, so they planted their corn close to one another, like a big family. Here the corn plants had the protection of the high outer garden walls as well as the old stone walls that formed the garden quadrants. Indigo ran to the hollyhocks along the south edge of the raised beds, and this time the parrot lost his grip. At the last instant Indigo felt him let go, and off he flew, flapping his clipped wings madly for about ten feet before he landed and clung to a pink Persian rose trimmed into a small tree. Indigo ran to the rose tree and returned the parrot to her shoulder.

“Look, here’s where all the flowers came from,” she called out to Hattie. Aunt Bronwyn broke into a big smile; as she wiped her eyeglasses on the edge of her apron, she explained the roses, the lilies, the hollyhocks, and the pear trees did not originate in England but in the Near East and Asia.

“Your people,” she said, “the American Indians, gave the world so many vegetables, fruits, and flowers — corn, tomatoes, potatoes, chilies, peanuts, coffee, chocolate, pineapple, bananas, and of course, tobacco. Indigo felt suddenly embarrassed. Sand Lizard people barely were able to grow corn, and they had no tomatoes, peanuts, or bananas. The Sand Lizard people gathered the little green succulents called sand food; sand food could never grow in England or New York or even Parker. Sand food needed sandstone cliff sand and just the right amount of winter snow, not rain, to grow just under the surface of the sand. Indigo missed sand food with its mild salty green taste better than cucumbers.

Aunt Bronwyn explained a number of the food crops of grains and vegetables and a great many flowers were unknown in England until the arrival of the Romans; thus cattle and pigs, still highly prized for their milk and meat, were once so important they had been gods; even now it was possible to find old churches with the figures of sows and piglets carved in the stone doorways.

In the sunny west garden big dark red dahlias grew at the feet of giant sunflowers with faces like dinner plates. Indigo never imagined so many different sunflowers, some with red petals, some with white flowers — all sizes, with many-flowered branches and single flowers alone. Indigo whispered to the parrot she wished they might have come later in the year, after the plants had gone to seed. Still, she looked carefully on the ground under the plants in case there were any early seed pods. She knew just the place to plant these sunflowers, not far from the spring above the dunes.

She smelled a heavenly perfume and turned to a plant as tall as she was, with handsome dark leaves and little white bell-shape flowers. “Smell this!” Indigo called to Hattie, who did not recognize the plant until Aunt Bronwyn teased her about not knowing this most American of plants, white-flowering nicotiana, tobacco.

The south and west gardens were planted with flowers among the vegetables, with herbs and medicinal plants scattered among them, since they preferred to grow together to protect one another from insects. Indigo caught the scent of the datura before she recognized the plant because it was taller than she was, its blossoms the size of saucers. She pressed her face against the big flower and inhaled so deeply its pollen tickled her nose.

“Hello, old friend. You sure grow tall in England. Are you trying to get closer to the sun?” She showed Rainbow the round spiny seed pods of the datura but told him it was not polite to take it; when she got him back home he could have as many spiny seed pods as he wanted.

She was only a little way into the tomatoes and the bush beans when she looked to the far edge of the west garden and caught a glimpse of the brightest colors, lush flowers on handsome stalks almost as tall as she! The reds, oranges, pinks, and purples of the flowers were so saturated with color they seemed to glow above graceful narrow leaves of deep green. Indigo loved the fancy ones with different colors — white centers and white edges or even spotted petals. These flowers! Sister and Mama would love flowers like these! Aunt Bronwyn was happy to tell her about the gladiolus; originally they were brought from Africa but they’d undergone a great many changes by the hybridizers.

Hattie asked about the medicinal plants. Yes, a great many did require shade and damp — monkshood, belladonna, gentian, valerian — but ways could be found to grow almost any plant, though one might have to take it into one’s bed as the old German orchid collectors did every night all winter.