What Shape The Garden Takes

In the quiet hours of the afternoon, I rested in the hammock. Thin beams of light pierced through tiny gaps in my roof. I drifted back to thoughts of my apprenticeship. Those were days spent without breaks, studying, my nose in a book for twelve hours at a stretch. I barely saw the sun back in those days. On the beach, I could hardly escape it. More familiar was that feeling of too little sleep.

Evenings spent walking through the old rooftop greenhouse at the university with Professor Selwyn. Vines curling around rusting support beams. The smell of damp earth in the air. The glass rooftop of the greenhouse, mottled with city grit. Evening light bleeding through the dirty reds and browns.

I’m there.

I see Selwyn as she moves between planters in her old, stained canvas coat, the sleeves rolled back to the elbow. Her fingers touch the stem of a plant I don’t know, and she notes something I don’t understand.

“You don’t arrange them?” I ask, eyeing the tangle of roots. The garden beds seem so chaotic to me, plants climbing over each other, struggling to win.

Selwyn rarely makes eye contact, preferring to focus on her plants. “I let the plants negotiate their own arrangements.”

She crouches near a planter, brushing her palm flat against the dirt, listening. She clears a few fallen leaves.

“It’s not our place to dictate every outcome,” she says. “We give them shelter. Light. Patience. They decide what shape the garden takes.”

I kneel down next to her, one hand on the edge of the planter. “And if things go wrong?”

Selwyn just smiles.

A draft blows through the greenhouse. Hanging tools clink against a wall. The plants tremble in the wind. Selwyn stands again and continues down the row of planters.

She says, in a whisper, “There’s more wisdom in these wayward vines than in half the entire faculty…”

I laugh. We walk in silence for a time.

Looking up through the dirty glass, Selwyn says, “You’ll do fine out there.” She brings her gaze back to her garden and taps a tomato plant once with her knuckle, gently. “You nudge things. You build the frame. Let them find their own weight.”

I look down at the plants, their quiet insistence, their patient relentlessness, and I nod.

She smiles again. We stand for a while. She brushes away another crumpled leaf.

 

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A few hours later, I woke up. My daydream had turned into a proper dream; I’d fallen asleep. I was still a little dazed, groggy and confused about where I was. Last night had taken its toll.

“Today is a write off…”

There were a few more failed attempts at fire. Then the sun sank low. I picked myself up long enough to walk down to the beach.

There I found a spot, sat in the sand and watched the sunset paint the sky. Rolling over a stump, I spread my new tarp over it like a fancy tablecloth–a nice spot for dinner and a show. I’d been at this for days now and, while I needed to gather more food and somehow make fire, I surrendered to the fact that it could all wait until tomorrow. I indulged myself in more than a regular ration of my last fresh water bottle. I tried making an open-faced Kehra seed pod sandwich, the fleshy bit mushed and spread across a leaf of seaweed. It was not good. After the first bite, I scraped the Kehra pod goo off the seaweed with a stick, ate that, and saved the seaweed for later.

I sat back, propped myself up with my arms behind me, and crossed my legs in front. In the sky, and on the water, the gradient of colours changed faster as evening arrived, shifting toward deep purples & blue. I’d been here 5 days. I’d been in the low-metabolism pod for something close to 25 yea…

In my peripheral vision, I saw movement.

I turned to look and could only see the beach. The trees that lined the edge of it swayed gently.

“Just the breeze.”

I closed my eyes and felt the last moments of the setting sun on my face. Tomorrow would be a long day, but for now, I could just enjoy the feeling. 25 years…

I heard a stick break.

I opened my eyes, turned and scanned the beach again.

Far down, right at the edge of the trees, I saw swaying of bulbous bodies. The jellyfish creature had come to my beach, and it had brought a posse. There were four in total. I tensed up, but none of us moved. Tendrils twisted as bodies turned to stare at me, but quickly turned back toward the ocean when I glanced their way. They knew they’d been noticed. Still, they didn’t move. I, too, turned back to look out at the water and I heard the stick finish breaking as one of the creatures finished shifting its weight.

I slowly reached for another bite of pod seed goo. I could feel all eyes on me. When I turned back, all together the creatures shuffled in the opposite direction, adding a little distance between us. I took a deep breath and leaned back onto my arms.

We settled into it. They were far enough down the beach. I looked again and they moved again, clearly signalling their intention to come no closer.

And so, we sat vigil with one another as dusk settled in.

I ate the rest of my meal. I said nothing. The sun’s light stretched out over the horizon once more. As the beach darkened, the creatures stepped out from their cover amidst the foliage, and slowly, awkwardly walked out into the water. I watched them disappear beneath the waves, started to pack up my things, and finally finished the math I’d been doing in my head: 5 days here, 25 years in a pod. I’d left university to board the seed ship… Was I, in my mid-forties?

“Am I in my mid-forties?!” I asked the ripples in the water.

The countdown fell and landed up the beach near the shelter.

“I think I’m,” I did some quick finger math, confounded,”…I’m in my mid-forties. 42?!”

Silence. I heard the sky message crumble and drift away. 19 days left.

Countdowns from the sky. Wiggly visitors on my beach. A good shelter. A new map. SEN. Old bones. No fire.

Nothing to do but press on…