I want to walk back a bit further. To meet people I never knew. But there are far too many so I imagine them amassed collectively as giants of the past.
There are two prongs to this particular digging fork. A rich heritage of generations who have used this soil of Thailand. So many hands and minds moulding what sits outside my window. It is not my culture yet right now feels very close. Second is a similar branch of a different tree that created my attitude. I am a British fruit, fallen far from its tree. Sometimes these prongs twang together awkwardly but I am slowly finding a better rhythm.
We all borrow land from giants and pass it on to others.
The first Thai giants took the vast floodplain of swamp and inundation forest and broke their backs to coax the water into a more gentle beast. And what a time of beasts that must have been! The snakes I meet are nothing compared to theirs. I wish I could have seen it and yet I know I am not man enough.
Other giants then came to my garden and smoothed it with buffalo muscle. Connected it, furnished it with tamed bananas and papayas and mangoes and community. Improved the rice, improved the life. And they relied on my home in a way I do not. I miss that but the thought also scares me.
So much of them remains in the people around me. Direct contact is memorable and I am grateful for it. There have been many friends and family who perhaps deserve a mention here but aren't going to get it. I know exactly who taught me about banana plants but who taught his teacher's teacher? Those are the deeper roots that allow me to stand tall and pick the fruit.
And what of the old country? The place that made me. Where I learned to appreciate the peace of meadows, a robin on a spade and how names evoke. Woodlice to some, gramfer-gravies to me. In this sense my teachers were the giants who kept allotments and sat around in rubber boots drinking tea. The blessed creators of the holy cottage garden.
They also taught me that gardens go beyond fences. A nation of garden paths meandering to all corners of the land. A land that, basically, is just an enormous garden. I learned that to walk is to think but perhaps not always see. Again, much of this is there in the people I do know. They were the ones who passed it on to me, as streamwater flows over rocks.
My values come from theirs and my role is to apply them in a new context. If I can. Seen like this I feel the responsiblity. Am I being watched, judged, by these two giants? No, I think they only come to guide. To help me blend the experience from half-a-world away with the reality of this soil in this climate with these traditions and these neighbours. So together we build the garden path. It's not the best ever but it has its own character that tells the story of them and me.
Pick at my garden's seams and they will unravel back through so many lives I never knew.
To say that they are "people in my life" is stretching things and yet the more I mull, the more true it feels. No, our eyes never met, but those time-stitches that bind us are the deeds that made a garden. I know those people from what they left me: the form and function of my sanctuary. And perhaps, one day, I too will be part of a giant. And future folk will look back at us and wonder.
This is an entry for the very stimulating CreativeGarden Challenge that runs weekly from every Sunday - try it!
