The Landscaper Doesn't Care

The Landscape Doesn’t Care

Minnie was still recovering and short of breath from her bout with COVID-19 when she attended the first face-to-face meeting of the Innisfree Resident Council meeting since the disease had shut most activities down. Now that almost everyone on the campus of the retirement community was fully vaccinated, things were gradually opening up and momentum was growing for a celebration. 

Before she retired to Innisfree Landings, just off the Jersey shore, Dr. Arminda Byron had been the first African-American female high school principal in her suburban Philadelphia school system. 

Rita Brava, the long-time council chairperson, was advocating for the renewal of the once-annual Spring Fling while Minnie made a strong argument for making it a special Earth Day. 

“We have been cooped up inside for almost a year. Mother  Nature has been teaching us lessons: lessons about the disease itself and how to cope with it, lessons about living in isolation from one another, about the importance of family and friends, lessons about being isolated from nature herself. We need to show our respect for her power and our gratitude for the world beyond ourselves. Let us get out and breathe, let us get out to appreciate and honor our environment.”

Rita kept her head down, occasionally shifting in her seat as Minnie spoke, looking up and around at her followers as Minnie wound down. “Thank you, Arminda.” She was the only person to call Minnie the full first name. “We’re all happy, of course, to have a newly elected member like yourself speak right up. I’m especially happy about the diversity you bring to our council. And a COVID survivor at that. As for Earth Day, maybe next year. Right now, I sense a great urgency to break out, to have a good time, to return to the way it was before, to bring back some kind of normalcy. Spring Fling is a long tradition here, since before your time, and I want to bring it back bigger and better than ever.”  Her followers smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “Let’s vote.”

Everyone except Minnie and her friend, Phylo, voted in support of Rita’s proposal. Minnie was disappointed but not surprised, the disappointment a bit edged by irritation at Rita’s condescension. 

Phylo approached her after the meeting to express his support, but she waved him off. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m only afraid for what might happen with the kind of big celebration Rita is talking about. How it might kick off another surge.”. 

Never one to stay down long, she smiled and said, “How about a walk? I haven’t been out of this damned place for months. Let’s go out on the dunes path.”

The air was fresh and clean. Minnie took a deep breath and sighed. 

“Strange, isn’t it? Phylo said. “This man-made island, built by dredging the muck out of Manahawkin sound and hauling in all these plants and animals, including exotic species of both. A strange, man-made, carefully landscaped version of nature for an Earth Day observation.”

Minnie continued in silence, walking slowly and carefully, not fully recovered from the disease. 

She finally said. “The landscape didn’t care about all that. “Look around. All that time you and I were stuck inside, the landscape didn’t give a darn. See that clear, blue sky?”

As they moved along, she pointed out  the abundant plantings—the dune grass, the eelgrass in the salt marsh, the shrubs, the trees of the maritime forest: evergreens, white ash, swamp dogwood, and mockernut hickory—none of these plantings cared that they were imports, brought here by persons to this person-made island.  Nor did they care that no person had shown them any care in last year.

Indeed most were thriving. Some, of course, inevitably, were dying out—such is life. But most, in just eighteen short months, were taller and overweight. A year may be short for imported plantings, but long for the imported persons to endure.

As for the creatures large and small, New Jersey native birds and animals—osprey, cormorants, herons, egrets, terns, songbirds, ducks, and gulls; the mud snails and the marsh snails, the ribbed muscles and, at the edge of the marsh, the skunks, raccoons, and beavers, the magnificent terrapins— and the imported exotics as well— emus, and llamas. Some of them died (perhaps many, it’s hard to know without an official count). Such is the circle of life. But most stretched and spread. Indeed, the beavers had already grown particularly large in a year and a half.

These eighteen months when humans were absent. These months when the retiree residents of the Innisfree Landings complex could only look out the windows of their apartments. Those months ago when the Resident Council was still having its monthly face to face meetings.

“None of these plants and creatures care that they once were immigrants,” Minnie said. “They’ve just fattened up while we were gone.”

Minnie paused to lean on a tree while she caught her breath. Still, she smiled happily at the blue sky again. “Look up,” she said, pushing off from the tree to resume their walk. “No haze. No pollution”

Phylo smiled and nodded before he said, “Look at how the weeds are taking over the path.” 

“Weeds are just plants that grow in places people don’t want them,” Minnie said. “They need love too.”  

Down in the marsh area where the water of the Sound was beginning to rise above the reeds and lilypads, her eyes brightened at the sight of the huge beavers gnawing, never even glancing up at the two humans passing by,  She told them to stay busy but to take care not to harm the marsh too much.

Their stroll finally took them down by the shore of Manahawkin Sound where she delighted to see teeming fish in the clear water.

“Amazing. This may just be your best Earth Day ever, my friend,” Phylo told her. 

“Almost,” Minnie said, looking at the eroding shoreline. “But—” 

“But?” he asked.

“But the  Sound keeps rising.”