Her Garden

Laura Civitello

It’s not my garden, it’s her garden. We met half my life ago and immediately felt oddly related, like long lost cousins. We became sisters over time.

I’ve known this garden for half my life, too, in all its iterations. It was more ambitious, more organized back then, with rows of corn entwined by their companions, the cucumbers, and carrots, beets, and zucchinis all relegated to their areas. Sometimes, just as it was all ripening, they would go on an extended vacation, leaving me to care for the house, the garden, the pets, and to eat and give away what she’d labored to grow.

You learn a lot about her should you ever attempt to move furniture with her. It is impossible. She takes on most of the weight and moves with her own plan of action. She cooks elaborate feasts for her large chosen family and cleans up, too, telling us not to “worry about it”. I always laugh and ask her when she ever knew me to worry about anything.

Now I stand here in the early morning watering this beautifully blurry version of the garden while she is very far away undergoing cancer treatment not available on this little island in the mid-Pacific.

This garden is gently blanketed with nasturtiums. Arugulas, bitter with age and gone to their tiny white flowers reach through the riots of marigolds, standing guard against pests. Dark Rainbow Chards burst through this orange sea. Herbs escape from large pots and climb over cement angels and frogs and down the legs of metal chairs. Fennels gone feral beseech the sky in prayer. A dense box of asparagus spills its edges. I dig through their lacy ferns. It yields just one shoot each morning which I break off and eat on the spot. Eggplants! I won’t eat them, but their color and shapes are plump with nightshade magic. I thought the tomatoes weren’t ripening until I understood that they are a yellow variety.

A row of majestic papaya trees watches over it, all hung with big green fruit, the size and shape of the breasts that she lost in a double mastectomy years ago.

I water first in the early light, then wade into the knee-high tangle to pull away the grasses that threaten to take over. Tradewinds blast across the gulch that backs the property, a steep, deep crevice where Maui spirits live their spirit lives. Pigs squeal from the farm across that divide.

I pull at the grass with both hands. I will not let this garden be smothered. It’s her garden.

Laura Civitello is a long time Maui resident who is about to leave an exceptionally fulfilling 17-year career working with youth to experience her life’s next chapter. She is trusting in the Great Unknown, it has yet to let her down, and she is certainly intending to spend much more time with her first love: writing.