The Garden Fairy

Where would I be without the “garden fairy”? Just writing those two words here brings me such joy. My garden fairy is two inches tall, all pink except for her yellow hair and wings. Her outstretched hands hold a daisy—pink, of course. She stands front and center in my garden, among the lupines, the giant zinnias, a few asters, one gloriosa daisy.

Before I moved to the city I had 40 acres and many gardens. In a yardless apartment, I thought I was over that dirt-under-the-nails thing, the bending and squatting, the tending.

Not so, however, and a few years ago I took over an abandoned city garden. It had a yew at one end, a spirea bush at the other, and an unplanted, unkempt expanse of dandelions, witchgrass, and a little pigweed in between. If I’m honest, it was the pigweed that attracted me to the spot. Up north, my family ate pigweed, steaming their tender, early shoots, adding a little butter, maybe vinegar. My old garden life supported such diversity; but that’s not possible with a small city patch of needy dirt intended to beautify a little walking park, and so I uprooted the “weeds” and created what I intended to be a garden spot anyone could love.

The springs have been generous with their rains, enabling the perennials I added to take hold and flourish (there’s no water source here). By last year, it was lush and riotous with color, approaching the look and dynamics of a hardy established bed. I couldn’t wait to see it emerge from winter, anticipating hundreds of green shoots arching into new light.

Day after day, I walked to the garden, expectant. Day after day, there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not even that bullish witchgrass. It was as if the earth had been plucked clean of every seed. Winter snows are scooped from the city streets onto my plot every year, but this time some combination of ice and melting, refreezing, suffocated it all.

I wrestled with starting anew. What if the plants were killed again? What if I had to buy new goods each season? (Not part of my plan.) I walked through the park for days, and each time I felt sad at the loss. I ached for the garden and for me in the garden.

And so I started over—with goods from a friend, from someone I had in a seminar, from a church plant sale, a local nursery.

When I went away in early summer, I asked neighbors whether they would keep an eye on the garden. Their little Vicktoria decided she wanted to take care of it, and with the help of her family, she watered my new struggling plants, carrying small overflowing pails each day, rationing out the water. I was moved, and sent a thank you note.

Then my fairy just appeared one day, already in residence, a thank you for a thank you from a child meant to dazzle the world with her generosity of spirit. She may not yet see it that way, given that she’s only five years old.

She also may not know that she chose a fairy for my garden that looks very much like she does. And so each day all summer long as I have weeded and tended this city garden, I have thought of her and of the community that makes this all possible.