When I was little, I remember the yard day that occurred each spring. We’d be up early on a Saturday and buckled in to our car seats, en route to the plant outlet and Home Depot before the sun was fully risen overhead. After getting supplies, we’d set up in the yard to pot plants and orchestrate a complete makeover. I remember purple pansies– they were usually involved– and the smell of mulch, and exhaustion. It was always a long day. I remember my mother sitting on the ground, gardening gloves in hand as she categorized the flowers destined to be planted, placing complimentary colors destined for the same pot in cordoned off areas.
My favorite part of those days was the plant outlet. I loved wandering through the flora. A little girl, I felt indestructible, like I was in a jungle, completely alone, surrounded by beauty and fending for myself. Surrounded by the explosion of green that poured out of every corner, the plants there seemed wild and expressive and free. The potted purple pansies in stone planters on our front porch felt less so. The pansies were a different kind of pretty. They implied order, teamwork, and seasonal change. Distributed nature, they were tamed. I now associate pansies with red brick. Do pansies even exist in the wild?
I never felt I had a particularly strong affinity for flowers or gardening or plants. And following those yard days, I frankly didn’t give flowers or plants much thought for years. However, in the past few months of living in New York, plants have slowly, somehow almost unbeknownst to me, infiltrated my Brooklyn apartment. I honestly hadn’t even realized until Andrew suggested we visit his parents in California for a few weeks and I responded, “but who will take care of the plants?” that I was now officially a plant girl. Now, I understand that plants are having a ~moment~. The recluse plant girl is a stereotype of years past, and cultivating plants is now considered sexy and chic and baseline Brooklynite. But my affinity for plants is unrelated to their being in season. Each plant in our apartment has been one I’ve gravitated to for some reason in one scenario or another, and before I’d made a conscious decision, was walking out of a store, plant in hand.
What happened to me? What brought about this change? Does this mean I’m more capable of responsibility, willing to water and care for a plant, knowing that I can keep it alive? Does this mean I’m taking more ownership of my space and home and enjoying growing a space whose style reflects my own? Does this mean I’m an adult? I think all of these are perhaps true. But upon reflection, I’m realizing that my affinity for plants isn’t anything new.
When I was younger, my favorite book was Miss Rumphius. It’s about Alice Rumphius, a woman who, in seeking to make the world more beautiful, planted lupines in the wild. Tall and spindly, lupines shoot up from the ground in deep violet and blue and pink. They’re proud plants, and multitudinous. I loved Miss Rumphius and I loved lupines. Though often the same color as the pansies in our stone stoop planters, they represented something different: freedom. What a beautiful concept to plant flowers knowing they’d stay where you put them and multiply and evolve with the landscape around them. You gave them life separate from yourself, you didn’t present them as proof of polish. They were inherently unpolished and that’s what made them so spectacular.
What a difference from a bouquet. Though I am always grateful to receive a bouquet as a gift that signifies a moment, I am acutely aware that that’s all flowers can be: momentous. I never purchase flowers for myself or my apartment because though beautiful, the only way to enjoy them beyond today is to fight their impending doom, frantically watering them in order for them to survive an extra day. Flowers are a symbol of something beyond themselves and they exist for right now. I much prefer the Rumphius method — creating beauty that will last– and giving the gift of survival and untamed growth, rather than ephemeral beauty. Letting a plant be itself, nothing else.
Miss Rumphius is an important lesson in vocation. I’ve yet to find one. But, I think life provides endless opportunities for micro-applications of the Rumphius method. In the last two weeks, racial injustice has been at the forefront of national dialogue. Protests have erupted nationwide in the wake of the death of George Floyd and other recent instances of violence toward black people like Brenna Taylor, Ahmoud Arbery, and countless others. Why now? Along with black voices, my social media feeds are filled with white apology, remorse for not realizing how bad it was until now. How did so many white “progressives” miss the black anger simmering beneath a calm lid for so long. Why are they shocked that in response to an increase in heat, the already bubbling water boils, leaving the lid clanging and heaving. How could well-intentioned, albeit uninformed, citizens not see the racism that permeates society, and not see how they perpetuated it by not actively fighting it? For years, white lawmakers and writers and dads and moms and activists and artists and business owners have been giving blacks racial justice bouquets, dead upon arrival. Tamed, requiring constant work, rootless, they better symbolize the emotion of the gifter in a moment than anything else. How can we be surprised that years later, the person we gifted flowers doesn’t have a garden? We didn’t give them anything to plant. I hope for white people, who usually have the option to opt out of these conversations, these events impress the importance of the Rumphius method, the abolishment of bouquets and the introduction of real, continued action to change our landscape. It’s inspired me to do so. Miss Rumphius did not plant the lupines for her, she didn’t count on them to grow a certain way, she let them occupy their space however they grew. She planted seeds, because she could: it was her duty to make the world better and her privilege to be able to do so. I’m on my knees, and I’m digging.
Write the Ship 