Months of cold, desolate winter. Old powers bring the cold north winds, their force tempered but still effective, exhaling a suffocating cold. Their breath leaches warmth, confines life, and seals a frozen cap over what lies below.
Some hibernate, shut away, waiting for the chilling grasp on their shoulder to relent. Others power through. No alternatives are available. Compelled to burrow through heavy snow drifts and sprint to the warmth of their dwellings. Community is found in short incidental periods of overlap.
Then, following patterns older than Foster’s Addition, the sun starts staying longer. One breakthrough day. Then a couple in a row. Snow recedes. Power isn’t relinquished peacefully: a sudden freeze and melting snow turns into heavy ice mounds, better able to withstand warming days.
An annual battle waged back and forth enters the waning days of wintertide. All that is left are a few ice mounds, remnants slow to disappear. The frozen cap gives. Life below breaks through in its many forms.
It is a new season.
Inside, below the surface, is my staging zone.
My outline for a landscape full of my summer favorites.
A head start on my detailed fantasy to make the most of the season.
From the southern hemisphere: nasturtium and eight types of peppers.
Six types of purple, red, and golden tomatoes. From shooter marble to fist sized.
Squashes, small now, but they’ll have vines that stretch yards and grow fruit requiring two hands to carry.
Yellow and Peruvian purple corn. A sprout now, knee high by the fourth of July, overhead by harvest.
Eggplants from all over: Italian, Asian, and Turkish.
Four separate garden spaces.
My speculative dreams will be curated, maintained, and harvested for my pleasure. Planned menus. Grilled summer nights. Baked fall feasts.
The setup to a simulate a warm spring day is quite simple:
A PVC frame wrapped in space blankets
A base made of heat mats
Red and blue LED tubes hung inches above the seedlings
Manufactured environments counteract the old powers.
Stable, supportive space for seedlings to develop until they are mature and ready to thrive on their own.
It is not yet clear if what waits outside shares my enthusiasm for the arrangement.
Rising with first light, Hopper Collins sets out on his caretaker duties. He tours the grounds, never following a set pattern, monitoring for incursions. Mischief.
It is his duty to find what the night brought.
Assess, fix, and prevent it from happening again.
A mental map forms highlighting the most pressing maintenance. A chore list takes shape. As the sun clears the treeline of neighboring plots, washing Plot 17 in light, he sets out to tackle the most pressing issue of the morning.
Tikal National Park has many Mayan temples and ceremonial ruins that remain hidden. The effort not just to uncover them, but to fight the jungle, day in, day out, is untenable.
Hopper Collins, eastern cottontail, is up against the same forces. Out of necessity,
strategically choosing his fights, accepting the limitations.
Not just eating, Hopper is actively maintaining a negotiated boundary, a complicated tangle of political ecology. The long term interests of multiple competing entities: here before settlers, responsible for protecting what was and still is. The short term interests of current tenants: unable to see beyond their five year plans. Then there are the interlopers. Sporadic incursions that sometimes must be repelled and sometimes come and go in the dark, leaving only unsettling hints of their disruption.
A nexus of ancient powers and current tenants whose concept of responsibility and ownership don’t follow strict borders. Boundaries that bleed past Plot 17’s edges or stretch back for chains.
The latest in a long line of verderers, balancing groundskeeper and diplomatic responsibilities for this place where multiple claims overlap. Caretaker is a title that has been passed down. Here long before the house. It is a selfless duty, not taken lightly.
Leave no trace, permit no decay.
As I trench a line through the wall mounted planter, I hear the polycarbonate rattle behind me. I created this liminal space to protect what I started in the basement from the elements and what roams beyond its walls.
I turn to scan through the wavy corrugation. A feeling of being watched. Is it wind? Or among the brown grass and scattering of leaves recently released from the deep freeze — is there something watching? Waiting.
Natural light floods this room, muggier than any space simulating the outdoors in April has the right to be. I take nursery pots from my box to start lining up on the tiered tables. This follows the day's plan, what I need to do next, I convince myself, now fully facing the yard through the polycarbonate. I glance out into the yard on each intake of breath.
My cistern has the remnants of last season’s rain. A canister at a time, I work through each row of nursery pots, making
a note of what is underrepresented. I soak the larger planters of everbearing strawberries, already flowering. I see runners extending, circling the planter walls and trying to escape up and over. A misguided belief there is room for expansion just out of sight.
As I flood the final container I notice plastic shreds on the floor. Looking up at the block window, I see this has scattered off the backing.
Like something was trying to break out rather than in.
Putting down the watering can, I scan the room again.
There are no other signs of disturbance.
Nothing that requires recording. Not yet.
I finish the watering, but I do not linger.
A binary: the cap has a solid seal until it doesn’t.
A single shoot, testing the barrier. But where there is one, there are soon many.
The garlic is the first to sprout in force. A shoot at the corners of 6” boxes, just as they were planted. A near perfect hit rate.
One morning it looks like an explosion has burst up. A light green puff too bright for this time of year. Over the next week the green spreads and then rises on dull green stalks. As the watery tartness builds the stalks transition to deepening red.
In little bunches, the fingers of peonies reach out. A burgundy, slowly they ascend, reach for the sky, before reaching full extension. The fingers then expand, morph green, and spread, becoming the power houses to feed roots and the blooms that will come in the next month.
The street front display features tight green spirals, slowly unwinding from the ground. A shock of green through the mulch, but easy to miss without taking notice. This is the unassuming start before Tulips and Hyacinth will not be ignored.
Sitting on the rim of an olla with a loose bouquet of flowers, Sola Thorn looks relaxed. Year in, year out the water fairy remains in the Plot 17 jurisdiction. Resting in the sun, between tomato seedlings, she is an effortless trust magnet. She seems safe, someone to confide in.
The tender offerings of flowers on her lap, the smile: it’s a feint, nothing more. On closer inspection, her toes are gripping the lip, the flowers lay loose as her hands rest out of sight. Her head turns, expression frozen, tracking movement through the south clearing.
Wide eyes. A tracking stare.
Wide smile. A set jaw.
Sola is patient. Fury behind the purple streaks, behind that frozen look. When the blue eyespots in her wings glow brighter, it will be too late to react
Maren Still is difficult to find. This is her threat. She blends in, staying frozen for hours, waiting in the shadows.
Catch a flash of her glowing blue eyes? You’ve overstepped. What follows cannot be recorded here.
Periodically you will spot her, poised on a rock next to her olla. She is eying the sky, slowly searching. Monitoring.
Looking like a peaceful weather observer judging the day’s temperature and humidity.
Seemingly calculating what the roots below will need.
But a water fairy isn’t a water systems operator. Maren’s charge is to guard access to this reservoir. The casual reveal of herself, to tenant and creature alike,
serves as a reminder.
Then she is gone.
Foster’s Addition is not a new place.
It is and is not a new name.
It is new in the history of this land. Only in recent history was the area mapped, measured, cordoned, named and numbered.
Foster’s Addition.
Plot 17.
135.14’ property depth.
Recorded Here
for the Unlucky
The fairies of Plot 17 watch over this record.
Would be thieves: they will know.
Your produce rots by morning.
Dreams of horrors you can't name.
You leave home and walk in circles:
close enough to see where you're going,
never arriving.