Read this beautiful essay about regeneration after betrayal and abandonment. In the author's case life returns to her in the form an exuberant garden that is not meant to look pretty for others:
I cultivated the way I wanted, without attention to decor or decorum. I let my garden run wild in a way that horrifies most landscape designers. Over the years, I made an effort to replace decorative elements with plants that had a function. I kept the roses because their flowers are edible. I pulled out rhododendrons and camellias and planted yerba mate and cherimoya trees in their place. I took down a twenty-year-old trumpet vine and replaced it with grapevines. This garden was no longer for other people. It had become, as my daughter calls it, “a fairy garden”—messy to navigate, but full of wonder and treats.
This reminded me of my father's way of gardening when I was growing up. For as long as I remember there was a patch of land somewhere in the houses we lived where he could grow something. He had no use for pretty and useless things like flowers and ornamental plants. Everything he grew ideally needed to be edible. Some flowers were considered more "functional" than others. He had his logic which I did not care to understand. I only remember how our garden stood out for being weird and unlike anyone else's. As a kid that bothered me mainly because I was not able to see it as a "fairy garden" as the author's daughter does. To me it was a sign of dysfunction and craziness laid bare for the world to see and judge.
My parents live in an apartment now and all the plants they have grow in pots on the window sills and balcony. There is a shocking amount of greenery for a place that small. Every place that can hold a plant of some sort does. They do have flowers now - more than I ever saw growing up. But there is pumpkin, gourd, tomatoes and chilies too. He has ceded control of the "garden" so my mother is able to express herself too. It is a chaotic scene much like their relationship of fifty years.
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