Obituary for My Garden Sonoma County, 2010-2023 The single most valuable lesson taught to me by my garden: Pick off dead or dying leaves, and fresh new ones will form. They’ll grow before your eyes if you slow down enough to bear witness. It’s counterintuitive but consistently true for us as well, in our human lives. My husband decided to sell the place I’d called home for 15 years. The realtor, in her zeal to transform the property into a commodity, ripped out half of what I’d nurtured there in what had once been a wilderness of weeds. The emerald mounds of baby tears pillowing the perimeter of the house, interspersed with lemons and roses. Further afield, the asparagus forest and raspberry grove that gave and gave nearly year-round. The rare perennial blooms I found here and there, whose seeds I saved and coaxed into life. Whose flowers I treasured. The destruction was anything but measured. A gopher joined in and chewed my Adriatic fig away from its roots, a month before it was due to give the gift of its fruit. “It’s dead,” her hired landscape gardener told me—and I noted the heavy pot she’d pushed up against the slender trunk that wobbled now. The artful fig leaves fainting. The fruit—a bumper crop—hanging limp. “Let’s give it food,” I said, filling the hollows with compost and setting up the garden hose like a bedside drip while, standing vigil, I picked off the dead or dying leaves. New ones pushed out overnight. I swear, the tree knew I was there and grew new roots. And even more fruit appeared the next day, luscious and ripe. Dozens of pale green figs, bright pink inside. A pact of gratitude and love like that between me and the blueberry bushes whose leaves blushed red while I watered and watched slowly. The potted Meyer lemon tree that audibly drank while I stood before it, the water-bearer in synchrony with its need. A Ganymede attentive to the life flowing through it, in much the way life flows, even now, through me. Communion of kingdoms: animal, vegetable, all perched on this rock as it hurtles through the universe. I lack the skill of making chlorophyll but give the gifts in my giving: food and water, judicious trimming of everything dead or dying. On my knees to pull some weeds, I thank the Earth that will receive me. copyright 2023 by Barbara Quick
Why you’ve received this
Unless one is a journalist, it can take a frustratingly long time for one’s new work to be published. Most print publications in the literary world will not publish work that has already appeared online.
I’ve taken to sending new poems by email to a select group of friends, so that they can read my new work without compromising its chances of getting picked up by a literary journal or magazine—or being honored in one of the literary competitions I’ve entered.
Substack offers the chance for me to expand that group. You’re receiving this email (with this cute graphics designed by my stepson, Sam Roden) because you’ve told me you’d like to see new work of mine that I want to share before it’s published. Believe me, your interest and encouragement warms my heart.
If you know anyone else who might like to receive a new bit of unpublished poetry or prose from me once a week, please feel free to add their email to my list.
Literature involves a sacred pact between writers and readers. I’m immeasurably grateful for those readers, many of them treasured friends of mine, who allow my words straight in to the softest, most receptive places inside them—places where they, alongside me, can climb aboard a life-boat made of words.
The kind of community I’d like to build here
Because so many of us are too far away geographically to gather round a literal fire together, I’m hoping to create a place in the ether where we can gather virtually. This is me, unvarnished, wanting to share what I love and what I’ve learned.
The writing life is lonely. Knowing you’re here—reading, feeling, caring—helps me know that I’m in the right place, at the right time, doing what I was meant to do on this go-round, in this lifetime, in this body.
What to expect
My plan is to send out something once a week—I’m thinking of posting every Tuesday morning.
This first post is a poem I wrote about leaving California. It explains a lot—but there’s still much about this transition that I’m trying to figure out for myself. The poems and stories I’m writing now—and even my journal entries—are all part of this process.
I want to maximize my ability to take good care of myself. Of course I’m hoping that the Vivaldi’s Virgins miniseries project will take off—and that my Budapest novel, “A Stolen Child,” will earn me an advance against royalties and a marketing budget with a major publisher. But I can’t count on these things coming to pass.
If there’s enough interest in “Life-Boat Made of Words,” I might monetize my Substack, as so many other writers are doing now.
It doesn’t seem quite right to charge admission to board a life-boat. But, then again, books have price-tags—and writers need to earn their keep.
Only pay if you can—and don’t pay more than you would for a latte. If that’s too steep for your budget, come on in and have a latte on me! I won’t turn anyone away.
We’re all stuck on board this sinking ship together.