We are all custodians of our little patches of earth.
At the end of the day, whether we own them, rent them, or just work on them, we will not be here forever. I hear people talk about gardening legacies, and it strikes me how short a legacy can be: vast structures disappearing in a matter of decades, to be rediscovered like treasure troves just a scant generation or two later, or the sprawling cities of the ancients, just a few feet beneath tangled jungle.
Ten years in the wilderness is a lifetime to something as malleable and erasable as a garden.
The stories of these plots far exceed our own in both directions – far into the past, far into the future. It strikes me sometimes: this place is billions of years old, they say there were lions here once. Before them, great towering caps of ice. Perhaps one day it will be a flooded wetland – playground of millions of sore-throated whooper swans, or patchwork tribes of yet-to-be evolved ducks and waders.
Painting by David Parfitt
Or perhaps, if my plans go as I hope, it will be a forest of mighty oaks –a haven for beast, fowl and all manner of creeping and slithering thing.
Field work
I go diligently about the field at the end of the plot, picking up molehills. It really makes you think. Especially when you overfill your bag – forgetting it’s still clay you’re carrying, because those little moles with their pudgy demon hands have kindly filtered and sifted it for you into pyramids of fine earth, and you forget how heavy it is. I think about the scale of my body struggling to drag bag after bag through the grass, and I think about their tiny bodies – fiendishly strong. The tonnes they must move in a day, their little minds set on what they do: experts of the dark. I think about them, and I’m glad to know them. I’m glad they do what they do, which so helps me out when all I need is good solid earth that I don’t have to cut out like slices of thick, impossible fudge.
Sketch by Notes from a Compulsive Gardener
After collecting as much as I can be doing with on a hot late summer’s day, it’s onto looking for saplings. We have a lot of oak saplings that never make it past ten inches or so – falling either to the field mowers or the deer, and I take their care seriously, even though I know they’ll outlive me to that strange scale again – where nothing makes sense from a human’s perspective.
I’ll be the one setting them up in pots, trimming their leaves to encourage their roots, but it will not be my generation, or even probably two or three that will really be able to relax about the fate of the tree. I will have to take good care of it – watch it for oak diseases, protect it from hungry mouths, or clumsy feet. All the while knowing they never used to need us at all, and there’ll come a time again when these trees certainly won’t miss us.
‘Majesty’ by Tacita Dean 2006
But I want there to be oak trees in that potentially people-less future. It matters to me that these little saplings reach their future, which never really did have anything to do with us. Their ancestors have been great naval warships, and the beams of vast important houses, but they were always meant to be trees, and I only want them to be trees.
As long as they keep finding the light, I’ll keep taking them out of harm’s way, and I’ll put them back when they’re too big for mowers and deer.
I was interested to read about the moles. We don’t have them here. I’ve only heard gardeners complain about them I think, because they dig into gardens a make a mess, but it seems they can be useful too.
You are going to leave a wonderful legacy by planting and caring for all those oak saplings.
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Yes, moles are not popular over here in general, because the English like their lawns. I’m not too enthusiastic about a well kept lawn. I’m an idiot for creatures though.
I hope the trees make it – it’s amazing to think something so small will one day be a true giant – hundreds of years from now! Still blows my mind.
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This is a lovely post with beautiful images. I love the idea of a gardener looking into a people-less future, and thinking of moles as colleagues and collaborators rather than pests.
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Thank you, Audrey!
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We do have moles here in Virginia, but we have more voles and groundhogs. We have snakes, too, so if the snake population is healthy, they keep the voles and groundhogs from taking over people’s gardens. This post is beautifully written, and the watercolour image is stunning (I actually gasped when I saw it).
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Thank you, Priscilla! I’m trying to keep my hand in with drawing again after a very long gap, so that’s really nice to hear! I love snakes and frogs and toads for providing me with guilt-free pest control – Eco-systems are awesome!
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Lovely post and drawings. I love how you interweave our impermanence in the natural world, despite our self-assumed importance. The picture of the hands with the ingrained dirt is particularly poignant.
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Thank you! I find it a reassuring way to think about things. How stressful can things be when it’s all so passing-by right?
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It’s good to know that you are looking after our English Oaks! There are far too few of them left in our country any longer! It’s also good to know that you are thinking about THEIR future & not ours!
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They’ll still be around long after all this, don’t you worry. I’m transplanting at least two more today! I might have to start finding custodians for them all at this rate!!
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