Starting
Point Caring for a plot of Earth in need of redemption
By REGINA SIEFFRIED
Another sister and I moved into a
rented two-family brick flat in the Shaw Neighborhood of St. Louis in 1991. In
this neighborhood named for Henry Shaw, who in 1860 designed and plotted the
now famous Missouri Botanical Gardens, we found we had inherited a small
backyard jungle, wonderful neighbors and a summer of weeding. After a concerted
Saturday afternoons work, friends, relatives and neighbors left us to our
own plans and devices for that yard.
Always a casual, no-effort sort of gardener, I had left a trail of
crocuses in the many other yards I had lived with over the years. I now
realized that this particular plot of Earth was a unique gift, one in need of
redemption. The former owners and an occasional tenant were gardeners; the
topsoil was an earthworms delight. So we had goodness from which to
grow.
After that first summer of weeding and eliminating mysterious
growths that a neighbor called swamp cabbage, we had a plan for the
next summer. Over the springs and summers, the garden grew; brick walkways
eased passages between beds. Clematis twined the wire fence on the side;
Virginia creeper and honeysuckle quickly covered the wooden fence in the back.
Ajuga was a lovely ground cover for a few years until it developed a fungus and
died; dragons blood sedum has taken its place. On a hot summer day, the
cat hides in the brilliant orange cosmos, and monarchs and hummingbirds hover
in the butterfly bushes. Gardening talk sprinkles the block as neighbors share
seeds, bulbs, plants and too many tomatoes.
As I learn from my companion gardeners, I also learn from this
small piece of Earth that came as gift. Ive learned the necessity of
boundaries and borders -- zoysia needs to be separated from the bed with the
raspberries, Michaelmas daisies and lambs ear. On the other hand, some
boundaries can go -- let the vinca by the back fence take over the long, narrow
strip it seems to want.
Usually a person with a plan and agenda, I often go to the yard
with one purpose in mind. I have, however, learned to listen to the Earth, to
let it tell me what it needs for that early mornings work. My plan
evaporates like the dew in the sunlight of the Earths request. Gardening,
like life, means getting down, dirty and sweaty if both are to be really lived.
Redemption happens in the down, dirty and sweaty times as well as in the joy of
flowers and vegetables. And the weeds are always a friendly reminder that the
jungle is only a lapse in vigilance away.
The province center of my community, the Adorers of the Blood of
Christ, is rooted in the middle of a 400-acre working farm in rural southern
Illinois. Several years ago, Jesuit Fr. Al Fritsch, land-audit consultant,
advised us that the apparent devastation of the Earth is desecrating a place
made holy -- redeemed at great price -- by the Precious Blood of Christ. Now
communities are called to enter into this suffering as compassionate healers
and renewers of the Earth, he said. In part, they can do this by beginning at
home. The manner is to be simple and modest; the method resourceful; the
atmosphere one of joy.
Those words are large enough for our farm and flexible enough for
an urban backyard. Rain forests need saving in Brazil, but jungles of weeds in
a yard need redeeming. I like to think that in some small way our efforts in
backyard St. Louis participate in redeeming the Earth. It is indeed a joy.
Adorer of the Blood of Christ Sr. Regina Siegfried gardens in
the Shaw Neighborhood in south St. Louis.
National Catholic Reporter, October 8,
1999
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