Read by Matilda Longbottom

One year, I am sorry to report, the females in my family backed into the sides of our garage on three separate occasions, causing damage not only to car doors and side mirrors but to the structure as well. In our defense, we had recently moved from a house with a generous carport to a new residence with narrow garage bays. And so, I came to know the man who lived at the bottom of the street with the “Small Masonry Repair” sign in his yard and, through him, a semi-retired siding installer who lived a few miles down the pike where the rows of beige two-story-with-bonus-room houses ended and a string of small farms began.

The mason was a rather tight-lipped sort who was in and out in minutes, but the siding man liked to chat. We talked at first about the difficulty of raising children (He was in charge of a grandson.) and later about the awfulness of politics. The third time I called, (“It’s you again?!”) we settled on the subject of gardening.

He toured my struggling tomato patch in the shady back of the house and admired various basil and pepper seedlings tucked around shrubs in the sunnier front yard. Then he widened his stance, folded his arms across his chest, and gave me a long, hard look. “You should plant your root crops as the moon gets smaller and your leafy plants as it gets bigger,” he instructed. “Did you know that?” Yes, I had heard that advice and followed it when the weather allowed.

“And you should never thank someone for giving you a plant or it’s bad luck,” he followed. Yes, I had heard that, too. “And, you can tell what kind of Winter we’ll have if you split open a persimmon seed in the Fall. If you see a spoon, it means heavy snow; a fork means mild weather; and a knife means ice and extra cold.”

He then narrowed his gaze and leaned in a bit. “Whatever you do,” he concluded in a low voice, “don’t let no woman walk through your cucumbers or zucchini patch during her cycle. That happened to me last Summer. My cousin’s wife went out to get some cucumbers and the next day all the plants wilted.”

I laughed a little and looked to see if I could catch a grin, but no, he seemed quite serious. “Well, I’ll remember that,” I said. He left with some spearmint cuttings which he acknowledged with a grunt so as to keep his luck untarnished. I never saw him again.

I thought of him some years later, though, at a different house with a different yard when my daughters were grown and gone. I had just returned from a long trip and went out to inspect the garden. It was mid-July. The rain gauge was full, the grass was long and lush, and the plants had advanced not by inches but by feet. Cherry tomatoes were ready to pick, okra topped the fence posts, and blackberries were at their peak, large and plump and dark.

Then, a wave of disappointment. I stood stock-still and took in a scene of dying zucchini plants. Before I left ,they had been the wild child of the garden, full of vigor and running in every direction. Now they were wilted into a limp jumble of vines.

I knew if I bent down and peered beneath their prickly leaves, I would find holes in the stems and sawdust-like frass—a telltale sign that the squash vine borer had drilled inside. I had seen this problem before.

And, yet, my mind drifted back and I began to smile, wondering what young maiden might have walked through my yard while I was gone.

The day was turning dark and shadows stretched in long, lobed shapes across my path. I thought of T.S. Eliot’s line about twilight, “when the lawn is pressed by unseen feet.” I thought of Persephone, the Greek goddess of vegetation banished to the underworld during Winter months, and how she, a young maiden herself, might have trailed through my garden in flowing robes, luxuriating in this high month of Summer.

I thought of all gardeners going about our business on such an evening until we’re stopped short by nature’s secret rhythms of life and death that neither science nor myth can fully explain: the unfolding of plants, the infolding of seeds, and the interval between.

I stood for a moment longer in the fading light, then stepped away from the wilted tangle of squash vines and turned toward the house. I decided not to look. ❖

About the Author: Jill Draper is a seasoned storyteller and passionate gardener who enjoys exploring the whimsical and often mystical world of plants. Her keen observations and humorous anecdotes bring to life the hidden secrets and timeless traditions of gardening. When she’s not tending to her own garden, Jill shares her love of nature and horticulture through her engaging and heartwarming stories.