reclamation

We spent seven years in Troy.

We thought it was our dream-come-true and maybe it was, but it was also the most difficult time that our little family has gone through. It started with the loss of my grandparents — three years apart — then our eldest child’s life-threatening mental illness, various and assorted financial setbacks and windfalls, and the near-breakdown and subsequent rebuilding of my marriage. And that doesn’t even include the ice storms, droughts, power failures, predators, mould and falling tree limbs.

Love and loss, triumph and catastrophe and through it all, that land held me. I’ve said it before that I believe that I served an apprenticeship to that patch of earth….and it was not an easy task-master. But I’ll always be grateful, because it showed me who I was and what my expectations were and then firmly held its ground in the face of them.

There were 70 acres of land around the house. Most of it was turned over to the tree nursery, the business of our landlord, but there was also a two-acre irrigation pond that was a part of what was essentially our back garden. There was a little hollow to the right as you came out the back door and looked down towards the pond. It was bordered by a stand of Norfolk pine — the kind that take the shape of the wind — and an elderly crabapple tree that bloomed magnificently each spring and then produced far too many apples for its aged branches to hold. In that hollow is where we put our chicken coops — repurposed campers (because we were all about the repurposing) — which held an assortment of laying hens and, for two years, turkeys. I had a vegetable garden — such as it was — down close to the edge of the pond so that hauling water would be easier. When we moved there, I had some pretty big homesteading dreams — which the land quickly unraveled, showing me that maybe my dreams weren’t what I thought them to be.

I reclaimed the Round-Up ravaged soil around the house and cultivated some flower beds, making a project of planting native species of flowers, shrubs and trees that would take more kindly to the weather and soil conditions. I read books on permaculture and layered straw on top of cardboard and filled in a hole with sticks and leaves and built a garden on top of it. The ground was compacted from years of farming so digging was out of the question. I sold our eggs — free range and organic — far too cheaply because I wanted people to buy them rather than the ones laid by tortured birds. I used the money to buy more plants — more native species from the wholesale nursery down the road.

I learned to track the seasons by the birds and the blooms — waiting for the walnut trees to leaf out before planting my seedlings, watching for them to drop to know when the frost was coming. The ravens and the swans, the juncos and jays, the goldfinches and house sparrows — every last one of them taught me their stories and broke down another layer of armour that the world had taught me to wear; armour that I didn’t even realize I was wearing. It was the kind of armour you craft for yourself when the world tells you that who you are and how you feel and what you believe in are wrong; that you’re too sensitive, too quiet, too emotional. It was the kind of armour where you look like one thing on the outside while trapping your real self on the inside. It sounds horrible — and it is — but it’s better than losing yourself altogether. I didn’t need that armour when I stood in the hollow and listened to the hens singing songs to themselves and watching the water of the pond rippling with fish feeding on mosquito larvae. Slowly, ever so slowly, I started to remember myself.

Yes, I learned a lot in those seven years — especially about the type of gardener I am. I had to adapt to the conditions and those conditions didn’t favour tender vegetables or ornamental flowers; we had no access to water beyond what I could collect in rainbarrels and the water table was extremely low, given that the neighbouring dairy farms pulled it all with their drainage schemes. Plus, when you try to cultivate a garden on the wild edges, boundaries become an issue — on a literal and metaphorical level.

It turned out that I really wasn’t that interested in being a homesteader, after all. Or, at least I wasn’t after Troy was finished with me. I couldn’t have my neat rows of pristinely weeded and diligently irrigated vegetables and after one season of raising meat birds (I’m a vegetarian but I thought it would be good to have our own ethically-raised poultry for ourselves, friends and family) I knew I couldn’t do that either. After our second turkey harvest, even my husband, whose job it was to take them to be processed, confessed to not having the heart, or the stomach, for it. So I turned my attention to what I could do and discovered that my passions lie more in the realm of providing sanctuary and safe harbour — for humans and non-humans alike.

A fascination for regenerative and sustainable horticulture — planting for pollinators and creating wildlife-friendly gardens that everyone can enjoy emerged from those seven years, fostered by the lessons of an alternating harsh and bountiful landscape. I learned, and accepted, my limitations. I learned that I love growing flowers just as much as I love growing vegetables and that there always needs to be room for both. Most of all though, I left there understanding that nature always does know best and is exceedingly generous with those who will enter into respectful conversation with her. She can also and get along just fine without us.

That land broke me, of that I am quite certain, not unlike the way motherhood broke me. It took everything I thought I knew and thought I wanted and held it up to harsh, unforgiving scrutiny. It brought me to my knees more than once — sometimes begging for mercy, sometimes transported with wonder.

The thing about being broken, though, is that you get to build yourself again.

And if you learned what needed learning, you turn out better for the breaking.

The land here is different; it’s kinder, gentler, infinitely more obliging. It’s more domesticated and I find that I’m the one having to encourage the wild edges — like it forgot itself, being subjugated into a lawn for so long.

Or perhaps it’s me who’s different. Perhaps the most important thing I learned in Troy was humility and reverence. I’ve learned where to assert myself and where to acquiesce. Maybe it’s a bit of both. I don’t suppose it matters, in the end. What matters is that I don’t forget what I learned; that I don’t start rebuilding that armour just because the birds are different and there are no walnut trees. After all, there are swans on the river sometimes, and last year I heard a raven cronking in the distance. There are foxes roaming the streets at night and a robin building a nest in the eaves. It’s all still here. I just need to pay attention.