Circular Gardens

The aged man tossed the quasi rotted gourds from his back deck into the rain soaked, tall grass between his house and driveway before settling into a woven wooden chair which creaked just barely louder than his bones, the ember of the lit cigarette in his hand a luminous glow in the lively blue evening. He figured it was probably time to be rid of them. He took a deep breath and puffed out a long billow of curling gray smoke, the porch light exaggerating the withered creases of his tanned hands as he extended a sandwich cookie to the horde of reflective emerald eyes gaping at him from the top of the deck stairs. The raccoons had punctually emerged from the dense forest not thirty yards beyond in every direction from the house, converging patiently on the dew laden porch to receive their nightly patronage. Each approached gently, as always, black snouts wriggling in reverent anticipation as they extended their slender hands, snatching their charge and stuffing the sugary delicacy directly into their mouths before receding into the liminal boundary of darkness beyond which the hazy glow of the deck light could no longer reach. He leaned back and exhaled a long breath, indulging in the chorus of crickets, Summer breezes billowing through dense forest canopies, and the chatter of his guests’ conversation as they enjoyed their nightly dinner party.

In the same moment, his son shoved his hands into the fertile, black soil of his garden, digging out a hole large enough for the latest plant he’d acquired from the nearby nursery. He had a noted penchant for unusual flowers; the red celosia had the appearance of a still flame, or a juvenile coral formation. They required full sunlight in order to adequately thrive, and he scoured the large expanse of his sloping property for the best possible bed, from the top of the cul-de-sac to the wood line just beyond his home which dropped off almost immediately into a steep valley. He didn’t want to resign himself to the space on the side of the garage with the yellow rose bush and mess of overhanging woolly thyme and lilac flocks; the soil was mostly clay and frequently flooded. He decided to squeeze them into the patch on the hill populated by his fire sticks, hen and chicks, and a somewhat purposefully arranged display of plastic dinosaurs, bygone relics of his daughters’ more puerile years. He hoped the local deer population would find these scarlet, velvety petals unappetizing; they irritated him enough by mowing down his hastas and ravaging the herb garden he had fashioned out of an unused sandbox. He devoted much time and resources into keeping their apathetic destruction at bay, from saving rotted eggshells to scatter around his unkempt lawn to lining his garden beds with intricate barriers of tulips. Regardless of his efforts, the large, hooved rats were relentless, and he had been forced to construct an entire enclosure of wood and chicken wire in order to keep them from decimating his most recent project, a bed of newly sprouted vegetables. He usually hurled rocks at the lithe, black eyed creatures as they crept silently into view- not aiming to injure them so much as frighten them off. There was one instance in which a buck and two does subtly commenced their downhill approach from the cul-de-sac, and he sprang from his chair the minute he noticed them in the bay window, jogging up the driveway and waving his arms in order to ward the troublesome creatures off and ignoring his one of his daughter’s shouts of caution and disdain the moment the male began to stamp the asphalt beneath him. He felt sometimes they worried needlessly, recalling a conversation he felt as though he had on multiple occasions and could no longer pin down.

“You know your smoking is killing you and the plants.” She said.

He waved an errant hand as he exhaled. “It’s mostly carbon dioxide. It’s good for them.”

His father skirted the edge of his overgrown driveway, taking care to avoid the immense tangle of gourd vines blanketing the lawn. The seeds had experienced little trouble germinating, and the verdant mess of leafy tendrils was interspersed by a densely populated array of brown and green fruit. He did not mind them immensely- they didn’t really get in the way, and they were somewhat interesting to look at. He ultimately picked out the largest and most mature of his crop and set to emptying them of their contents, leaving only the hollow shell in the wake of his carnage. He drilled various large holes into their sides, and the next time his granddaughters visited, he had them set about painting their blank brown exteriors, transforming the disemboweled fruit into colorful birdhouses. He hoped the local finches and sparrows would find some use out of them; he appreciated their company in the early mornings, the lilt of their comely music bidding the day some kind of ephemeral peace he had a difficult time maintaining of late. His son’s marriage was ending. He was little more than an outsider looking in, so he had little judgment to pass on either party. He only despaired the great anxiety and agony burning through the air whenever his family visited, his granddaughters’ solemn and distracted nature. It was likely worse for them than anyone. If anything, the whole affair was an emotional ordeal blown stupidly out of proportion. He himself had married young, and though certainly not all was flawless, they’d remained together through the brunt of raising their children. There were times when he rely to heavily on her pity, bend her to his whims via his decrying his various misfortunes. There was a moment in the kitchen when he threatened to take his own life in this pursuit, and she calmly opened a drawer and withdrew a chef’s knife before laying it on the counter in front of him.

“Ok, do it then.” He stopped after that. Through everything they did not separate until they were far older. Not everything was bad. Building a home for his wife and sons, teaching them how to crab and fish, walking down to the water with his family in tandem, vacations to a not so distant ocean- happiness takes time and work to maintain. It’s a choice.

His son pulled weeds from his herb garden, somewhat irate at having found his sage completely eviscerated. He wasn’t certain now if it was deer or rabbits or even box turtles to blame; his wife had taken the dog and as a consequent his garden was under constant attack by suddenly emboldened wildlife. He’d claimed he didn’t care, that he even appreciated not having an animal defecating on the hardwood of his home, but he knew in sincerity he regretted the pointer’s absence, how he seemed to sense emptiness and try to fill it by pressing his head underneath his palm or leaning his body against his legs. Far worse was the partial absence of his children. He only had custody for half of the week, and while he cherished every moment they were in his company, teaching them to cook and bake, taking them fishing and crabbing with his father, having their help in his immense endeavor of transforming a useless lawn into a meticulous meadow of maintained vegetation, loneliness consumed him when they departed, the weight of his silent home crushing him into smaller and smaller spaces, suffocating him. He couldn’t bear it, and when he could not distract himself with the complex needs of his garden, constantly laying down mulch and fertile soil, squeezing in new and bizarre plants, constantly fortifying his defenses against wild intrusion and consumption, he avoided the place altogether, opting instead to work as often as possible.

His father struggled to pull up the last of the decaying gourd tendrils, a few remnants of rotting fruit collapsed and black as they returned to the rudiments of the soil. Rotting, like his own organs, his rapidly dying cells replacing themselves with maligned and mutated copies. He’d lost half of his weight already, his yellowed flesh stretched thin across his increasingly frail skeleton, his tar filled lungs wheezing with ever longer delays. Still, he endeavored on in his nightly ritual, offering the local raccoons, opossum, and fox cookies and cat food. He sat out on his deck and lit his cigarette- it didn’t matter at this point. He listened to the morning birdsong, watched the eager parents stuff the hanging, hollowed gourds with dry straw and twigs. His son watched his daughters drift off into adulthood, watched himself alter his delineating path, correct a self-effacing error- find someone he had loved once. There came one still night when the raccoons approached the deck, palms outstretched and snouts wriggling for their offering, emerald eyes alight in the dim gloom, and there they sat into the morning haze as new parents flitted eagerly into the full nests above them. His son’s meticulous garden became overgrown in his abandon- the deer came and departed as they pleased, and the woolly thyme engulfed the hillside. And one of his granddaughters held this singular, collapsing moment in an endless dream, man dissipating in and out, a father guiding his son through a simultaneously complex and wild garden of birds and woodland mammals into loving and bittersweet eternity.