Why I garden
The story of my concrete pad-turned garden
I moved to a new place last October. When Halloween rolled around, I excitedly carved my pumpkin, poured all the treats I’d bought into a big African basket, got dressed up in whatever crazy stuff I could find, applied some ghoulish makeup, pressed play on the haunted house soundtrack from Spotify… you know the drill. And then I waited as the sun set, and set further, as the gloaming arrived, as twilight sifted into darkness, and… no one came!
Astonished, and urgent, I leapt up, got my keys, hobbled to the car with a lighted pumpkin and a giant basket of candy in my arms, and sped back to beloved Guido Street, my home for 26 years, where I raised my children and grew to be a mother, in fact, where I birthed my children, Bo in the archway between the living and dining room and Nina in the bathroom.
I’m in my new place right now, an apartment in a four-plex that I bought with my son in an investment/retirement play. It’s down in the flats of Oakland, about ten minutes away from Redwood Heights where Guido Street is. Here, in the flats, the ocean breeze is pungent with salt and sea. Sometimes it’s positively briny, heady and sexy. To push the point further, there are seagulls in my new neighborhood between Piedmont Avenue, Uptown, and Temescal. Seagulls, where there had been owls, dear owls hooting at…
