Read by Matilda Longbottom

We had been in our new house for just a few months. My youngest daughter was four months old, and my eldest was almost three. Moving to a new country with young children and no family nearby, staying home with them made sense. It started casually. I just wanted to hang a couple of potted ivies on the patio outside our bedroom windows to add privacy. Then I realized that our entire lower-level patio was open to the eyes of our neighbors and passersby. Our house was on a hill and viewed from the back, our bedrooms were on the third floor, the patio was on the second, and the garage was on the first. Inadvertently, we had created a stage.

Our house was in the center of a small town, right behind the main church. The foot traffic behind our home never stopped, and there were constant visitors to the municipal orchard that we bordered. We were in a small rural town in Brazil, 90 minutes from a major airport but still in the middle of nowhere. It was idyllic but also a shock to the system. In this little town, everyone had known everyone else their whole lives, just as their grandparents had. We were new and interesting curiosities—the telenovela of The American Family. Up went more plants.

I strapped bamboo sticks that I cut down from the nearby fields to our wrought iron fencing and wired pots to the fence, supported by the bamboo. I did not think too much about the kinds of plants I bought – the bushier, the better. Petunias loved our back porch. They leaped from pot to pot, volunteering in unusual but never unwanted places. One even tried, unsuccessfully, to grow in a crack in the wall. Neighbors saw the pots and the plants and began to bring cuttings. I reciprocated. Friends were made.

The plants were necessary for my sanity. I could not sit out on the back patio all day staring at the children. They were safe and needed to explore without my constant hovering over them. Then the children needed to get their hands dirty. Then they needed to decorate my pots. Trips to the gardening store was added to our list of outings, and they made fast friends with the cats that lived there. Then we needed cats of our own.

The children were getting older. The plants were outgrowing the fence. I repotted and repotted, but there was no sound fashion to strap such huge and heavy containers to the wrought iron. Something had to be done. We hired a mason to build a huge planter that ran the length of the wall. It was 2 feet deep, 2 and a half feet high, and 50 feet long. My plants loved it. So did the shrubs and small fruiting trees that we received as gifts at our barbecues and birthday parties.

My garden was full of personalities and politics. The bougainvillea would feign death until I tried to prune it out of existence as it fought me with every thorn sharper than the last, then defiantly erupt in vibrant clouds of flowers. The petunias continued to infiltrate every space they could, vying with the morning glories for total garden dominance. My shrubs and trees grew large enough that I could strap orchids on their trunks to enjoy the shade and revel in the moisture. Brazil is a wonderful place for gardens. Much grows well there.

Spending so much time on the patio with the plants, the cats, and the girls, I could not help but watch the loose dogs in the fields out back as they roamed by and frolicked in the orchard. Some had homes, some didn’t. Many were invited in to stay with us until they could get healthy and find their own homes. The giant planter provided enough space to crawl under the bushes and avoid the heat of the day. It was always there for those who needed it—a welcome and safe haven for exhausted street dogs.

I was given a jade plant from a friend who was getting divorced and could not care for it. It flourished, and I ended up with jade volunteers everywhere. They were so prolific I gave starters as presents to our daughters’ teachers every year. When my friend was back on his feet, I was able to return his jade with interest. His father gave me a night-blooming vine that would only bloom once a year, and we would spend evenings camped out in Summer at each other’s houses waiting for the bloom. We rarely caught them at the right time, but the evenings were never wasted.

We knew and loved four generations of that family and went to the funerals of two of them. We brought jade plants, never flowers. My daughters played with my friend’s son, and they called themselves cousins. Sleepovers in hammocks on the upper patio were concealed by the screens of ivy that had grown and the multi-storied hangers of African violets that filled the gaps between them.

Our garden became an extension of the forest behind the house. From the upper patio, we would watch birds flit from the treetops of the orchard out back into the shrubs of our patio, where we had hidden hummingbird feeders. When our jaboticaba trees started giving fruit, the bird visitors changed. We were visited by the big, bright, and beautiful, and the hummingbirds got wary but never gave up on us.

Our daughters grew up watching the caterpillars swarm the manaca and nursing the chrysalises into butterflies. We would celebrate the perfumed purple and white flowers and curse the caterpillars as they greedily consumed them. Then we would revel in the coming of the butterflies and consider the flowers a small price to pay as we helped the newly-emerged find safe harbor in the shrubs until their wings had dried and formed properly for flight.

My garden no longer needed tending as much as it needed taming. The roots were strong, and the plants were growing on their own, not needing a whisper of encouragement from me. But they still needed some pruning when they started growing too wild and needed me to build them supports if they wanted to grow but had nowhere to go.

Finally, it was my family that had to go. We had spent almost 13 years in Brazil, and it was time to return to the U.S. and be close to family again, our own biological one. We sold the house. We wanted my friend and his family to have it, but in the end, it did not happen—a fact that I will always regret. The house and my garden went to strangers. My friend and his family took as many plants as they could, the ones that could be moved. The cousins had sleepovers and tried to find ways to say goodbye.

Lost in the chaos of moving a family and their history to the other side of the planet, I tried to ignore the pain of not being able to bring with us those things which had the deepest roots. The cats, dog, and the souvenirs of the daughters’ childhoods—those could be moved. We would miss forever the community, the garden, the friendships—those entities that needed regular tending and formed the foundation of our lives.

Three months after leaving, I saw pictures of our house online in the background of a friend’s picture. The new owners had demolished the planter, and my plants, bushes, and trees were gone. It was a fresh start for them; it was a death for me.

We keep in touch with our friends, and the girls have made new lives here, and they are thriving. They are old enough now that they are becoming the masters of their own fates. I cheer them on as I can. The cats and dog have met snow and survived. I have a couple of potted plants but have put nothing in the ground. I have made no plans for exploring where real roots could grow. I do not know how to grow things in arid, western soil. In Brazil, growing felt easy, as if you just needed to show up. (The number of books on my shelves about gardening in the Atlantic Forest belies that sentiment.)

I know someday I will again have a mature garden. I will relearn how to set roots in unfamiliar soil, but for now, I am mourning the garden that I lost. Neighbors and colleagues have offered cuttings for when I am ready. It will not be long.

I feel the need for soil under my fingernails and watching things grow. Soon the need for a garden will be stronger than my dread of again losing one. I will remember down to my bones that plants and trees are just the symptoms of a garden. A garden is the time you spend and the community you build. My Brazilian garden will morph into an American garden, reborn in a different hemisphere, adapted to a different ecosystem. Gardens can never die if you keep planting. ❖

About the Author: Karina Mertzman is an amateur student of biology with a formal background in linguistics and education. Having lived in West Africa and raised her children in Brazil, she now resides in the western United States with her menagerie of animals. When not working at a small veterinary clinic, Karina spends her time nurturing her plants and writing for small magazines and journals. Her experiences living abroad have deeply influenced her love for gardening and community building.