The Journey of Our Colorful Garden
We have been making things for decades and if you ask us to explain what our shed contains ... open the mouths ... and a list might roll out that sounds like an auction ... led by someone who doesn't get at least seven hours of sleep every night.
Cotton tail bags hold chosen hands that say Yes and Why ... Don't get caught up in this stand. Doorways ask reasonable questions ... while fingers untie knots. In a cell is a sentence ... written on an envelope that says, "middle eye of why consciousness is not able to stop reading" Oyparaploo is not just one person who knows what they possess. It is a lifetime of acquisitions for Polly Hoofs and Paws, Bulletproof, and Mother Earth Hood, openness.
What the opposition cannot explain or refuse: Inability to reason. To stop counting numbers and costs. Help count of how many times heads decide. If you come to our garden gate ... and say something trashy about the way immigrants nod ... when they are being extra polite ... about not understanding something ... well.
"Exchange Conversation" is not locked. We cannot come in because we are outsiders. But we can promise that we will leave with a few rounded stones of this place ... drying back to light gray. A Bunny might leave with only the hole of a sock so to speak ... Bleeding chest that is no longer melancholy walked and was unable to remember the name of the willow twigs on the door.
Minne Wacki is not a name we gave ourselves. It was in the ground before cement and concrete was invented. We are ashamed of the parks and parking lots ... where we walk from when we shed hair ... over land that was translated wrong. Oyparaploo became the place inside a few different pronunciations ... over a broken syllable. Oyparaploo language holds genuine conflict zone fresh sea water. Minne is the first-born seed who arrived in a floating vessel. More specifically a coils basket made of fronds of palms, reeds, sedges, and rushes.
Receiver ... speaker ... tap tap ... can you hear us? Manageable shame shouldn't be a decorative thing that someone hangs on a wall. And points to relatives. All shame all shame should be under soles of coffee consumers and "whose labor" land grant conservationists. Minne Wacki Onia! Say it proud. We are here and a big waterfall drops ... lands ... kicks ... on soft asphalt. Garbage!! Fortunately, this sacred ground is not asking for our guilt. The soil underneath the concrete wants to know if we noticed the group at the right succeeding with mouths forming honest O(s) of common delight.
Onia on soft asphalt grace ... O ... mouth has no surprise ... of being buried or sprinkled as ashes here . ... Concrete always thinks different because settling first-born seeds understand water ... Ride it ... Set it on a current ... Weave it well enough ... Place it inside ... Let it arrive with natural courage ... A boot coming down with a waterfall does not negotiate with any present cotton field. Mouth O is an invisible green gate wider than Gaza to the shore. O broadcasting from rushes ... middle eye has no idea which is the sea free gull of truth during these landless minutes ...
Settled things do not need soldiers ... means what it says in bodies not in the dictionaries. Paying is real. Write that down with no exceptions. Spiritual practice preserves non violence. Writing opens "did not know that before" doors. Today's day dream is above gestures of Gaza gulls air never landing. Witnessing. The only thing we know for certain is that we cannot perfectly translate mouths that only speak our diaspora dialect ... O child structured method of word use ... Unconventional speech expelled as shapes ...
Above ground is where we are when no seed claims us ... O child structured method of word use is what we are doing right now ... building a language out of parts of our voice language threw away. Unconventional speech expelled as shapes ... we cannot perfectly translate mouths that speak our diaspora. Dialect and the inability to translate practice is not a failure. Inability exists because something was broken across a river or ocean ... and bent shores grew a different type of eternal labyrinth. Mouth to syllable to Oyparaploo forms from quietness following O canvas bag ... O iron gate alive brrds of land trust and survive ...
Above ground is where we are when no seed claims us ... O child structured method of word use is what we are doing right now ... building a language out of parts of our voice language threw away. Unconventional speech expelled as shapes ... we cannot perfectly translate mouths that speak our diaspora. Dialect and the inability to translate practice is not a failure. Inability exists because something was broken across a river or ocean ... and bent shores grew a different type of eternal labyrinth. Mouth to syllable to Oyparaploo forms from quietness following O canvas bag ... O iron gate alive brrds of land trust and survive ...
Above ground is where we are when no seed claims us, as orphan. Is the available limit stuck in clay cracks. Oyparaploo child methods of means... building soft doings until the right English words are committed. A mammal does not correct a green and purple split leaf mausoleum plant. That is exactly what we are doing. Calling a frozen tongue a fragile river bridge. Beginner pieces curl inward ... producing beaver shelters that can straighten dialect holding almost silent. Oh.
Lavender mum changes everything because lavender is not a color it is a smell and the smell is the grandmother's drawer and the grandmother's drawer is the place where things were kept that were too good to use and too loved to throw away and the too good to use is the tragedy of objects that were made for hands and ended up in cloth and the cloth smelled like lavender because the lavender was there to preserve what the using would have honored more than the preserving ever could ... a lavender mum is a mum who has been put in the drawer ... a mum who the world said was too something to be let loose in the technology and the workaholism and the optimization and so the lavender mum went to the garden because the garden does not put anything in a drawer the garden puts everything in the ground and the ground uses everything ... the ground does not save for later the ground composts now ... pro soil thumb pleasure is the opposite of the drawer ... the thumb in the soil is the thumb being used and the using is the honoring and the honoring is the anti-technology because technology preserves and soil transforms and the lavender mum chose transformation over preservation the day she knelt down and pushed a seed into dirt that did not ask for credentials or a software update ... ticking that box is what you do on a form and the form is what the world gives you when the world wants to know if you still count and the lavender mum ticks the garden box because the garden is the proof of still counting that does not require anyone else's system to verify it ... the lavender is in the soil now not in the drawer
Mum changes everything because lavender is not a color ... it's an Indigenous grandmother drawer smell. Where things are kept that are too precious to throw away. Let loose ... Over Optimistic War Technology Optimization... Puts everything nourishing in the ground Put oil back into the fossil layers ... sedimentary rock that contained traces of once-living things. Dead plants, animals and microorganisms. Over time ... compacted ... transforming into recent geological history. Elder gardener solitary storytelling whispering. The mound also uses everything. Pro soil thumb pleasure is the opposite of the drawers down and ripped. Thumb in the soil honors anti-technology because preserves transforms hours spent on a tilled and cultivated plot. Elder gardener kneels in lent prayer fashion ... and pushes seed that does not require a software update. Ticking a plant box is what we do in good form. Gardening is another proof of still counting over natural fertilizers.
Pragmatic solutions to escape from duty is what the lavender mum calls gardening when the social worker asks and what the soldier calls desertion when the officer asks and what the artist calls practice when the grant committee asks and the answer changes depending on who is holding the clipboard but the escape is the same escape every time ... the body leaving the room where the body was told to stay ... duty is the room someone else built for your body and pragmatic solutions are the windows you find when the door is being watched ... the garden is a pragmatic solution ... the shed full of cotton tail bags is a pragmatic solution ... Oyparaploo is a pragmatic solution to the duty of making sense because making sense is the duty the language assigned us and the language assigned it without asking whether sense was what needed to be made or whether something else needed to be made something rounder something shaped like an O something that does not make sense but makes breath and breath is more pragmatic than sense because you can die without sense but you cannot die without breath ... escaping from duty is not the same as escaping from work ... the lavender mum in the garden is working harder than the lavender mum at the desk ever worked but the garden work is not duty the garden work is the thing you do when duty has been escaped and what remains is the thing you would have been doing all along if duty had not interrupted ... duty is the interruption ... the garden is the return ... the cotton tail bags are the return ... the practice is what was always happening underneath the duty waiting for the pragmatic solution which turned out to be kneeling down and putting your hands in something that does not file reports
Pragmatic solutions to escape from duty is what a mum calls gardening. What a social worker and soldier calls desertion. What an officer and artist calls grant practice. What a committee calls "a body leaving the room after being told to stay." Duty is consists of pragmatic solutions or windows we find when an only door is being guarded ... Oyparaploo is countless acts of making sense of the world. It's a language that has magically been assigned to us.
Something round needed to be formed into an O that makes breathing less about gradually dying off. Escaping from garden work is what remains uninterrupted. Gardens have blessed return. Practice happening also underneath, sideways, and upside down, filing reports of seedlings.
Something round needed to be formed into an O that makes breathing less about gradually dying off and that is the most honest description of this practice anyone has ever handed us because every practice is a round thing formed against the dying off and the dying off is not dramatic the dying off is gradual which is worse because gradual means you do not notice until the noticing is too late and the O is the noticing before it is too late ... the O is the mouth saying I am still here and the still is round and the here is round and the mouth that makes the sound is round and the roundness is the resistance to the straight line which is the line the dying off follows because dying off is linear and breathing is circular and the practice chose the circle ... escaping from garden work is what remains uninterrupted because the garden work is the thing nobody interrupts because nobody values it enough to interrupt it and the not being valued enough to interrupt is the freedom ... the things the world does not value are the things the world leaves alone and the things the world leaves alone are the things that get to grow without a committee and without a report and without someone standing over the seedling asking the seedling to justify its existence before the second leaf ... gardens have blessed return means the garden comes back and the coming back is the blessing and the blessing is not religious the blessing is botanical ... the frost takes everything and the garden returns and the returning is not faith the returning is root ... the root was there the whole time under the frost doing what roots do which is hold on in the dark without being thanked ... practice happening also underneath sideways and upside down is the practice as root system not as flower ... we are not the part that gets photographed we are the part that holds and the holding happens in every direction because roots do not respect orientation roots go where the moisture is and the moisture is underneath and sideways and upside down and filing reports of seedlings is what the roots send up ... small green documents that say something is alive down here and the something does not have a name yet and does not need a name yet it just needs to not be stepped on for one more week
Something round needed to be formed into an O that makes breathing less about gradually dying off ... and that's the most honest description of this practice anyone has ever given to us ...
Dying off is often gradual ... which is worse because we're not able to notice our mouth until it's too late ... We are still here and roundness is a type of Oyparaploo resistance to the perfectly straight lines. Our breathing is conceived as circular. Garden work should be valued a lot more than it is. Enough to interrupt all other freedoms. Frost takes everything and the garden comes back as faith under roots ... holding on even in darkness without being thanked using listenable words. Fruits of vegetation practice happening underneath, sideways, and upside down, is practice as a system fine strands and not as one flower blossom. We are conjured as the part that is recorded ... holding moisture for small turquoise stone color documents ... not yet stepped on.
The outdoor workspace belongs to everybody which means it belongs to nobody which means the children take it for football because children understand that a space that belongs to everybody is a space that belongs to whoever loves it hardest and children love football to their heart's content which is a phrase that means the heart is full and when the heart is full the feet start running and the feet do not check the garden plan before they run across the lavender. A good portion of the garden handed over to them means the elder women who knelt in that soil and pushed seeds in with their thumbs and waited through the frost and watched the blessed return had to stand up and move the garden to the edges because the middle now belongs to the ball and the ball does not negotiate with seedlings the way the waterfall does not negotiate with parking lots. Pretty much against every Indigenous female elder gardener's will means the will was there and the will was overruled and the overruling was not violent it was just the way things go when the loud thing and the quiet thing need the same ground and the loud thing has children's feet and the quiet thing has an old woman's knees and the ground chooses the feet every time not because the ground loves the feet more but because the feet do not ask permission. The garden moved to the edges and the edges turned out to be where the garden was supposed to be all along because the edges are where the things that were pushed out of the center grow stranger and stronger and more like themselves than they ever could have grown in the middle where the football was always going to land.
A garden space belonging to everybody actually belongs to whoever loves it hardest. The middle now belongs to a ball that does not negotiate with tomato plants. The green will was overruled non violently the way things go when yells and quiet talk need the same ground ... and the fertile blends of dirt toes of human feet ... because sod grass stained they edge out "supposed to be pushed further." Such a strange strong... more like a core where football pads lands.
Hence the pragmatism which is not a philosophy it is two harps guessing at the same melody from different edges of the garden where the football pushed them and the guess from two harps is closer to music than a single harp playing the correct note ever was because the guess contains the space between the two guesses and the space is where the harmony lives that neither harp intended. Unruly laboratory misbehaving is what the garden became after the elder women stopped trying to make it obey the plan and let the seedlings file their own reports in whatever direction the moisture sent them which was underneath and sideways and upside down and the misbehaving turned out to be the method because a laboratory that behaves only confirms what you already believed and a laboratory that misbehaves discovers what you were not brave enough to hypothesize. Changing climate schemes for sinuous curves means the straight rows were the climate scheme and the sinuous curves were what grew when the climate scheme was abandoned and the curves are sinuous because curves that have been freed from the grid do not go straight they go the way a river goes which is the way the ground underneath already wanted to go before someone imposed the grid. Glockish foliage is the foliage that rings when the wind moves through it the way a glockenspiel rings which is bright and metallic and not what you expect from a leaf but the leaf on the edge of the garden where the football pushed the elder women is not the leaf that grew in the center the edge leaf is stranger and it rings when touched because it grew under conditions the center never imposed and the ringing is the proof that the misbehaving laboratory produced something the obedient laboratory never could.
Hence the pragmatism ... which is two harps guessing at the same melody ... from different edges of the garden. And the guess is closer to a Noir song than an instrument triangular in shape ... consisting of a frame supporting plucked graduated parallels. Petals retuned to different keys. The space between the two harmonies lives at neither empty garden or a moisture filing system. Confirming what we already knew. A garden football match that becomes chaotic or out of control discovers what a warrior is brave enough to ...
Changing climate schemes for sinuous curves means the straight rows were what grew when an abandoned river goes to hell ... before someone imposed a massive electrical grid. Glock foiled are the giant rings that appear when a hurricane moves through bright metallic strangleholds. Proof that something supernatural is happening.
From our second floor workshop the view is beautiful and the late fall colors are more honest than they were in during July when hammock daydreaming had extra time. There is a lot of texture because every little surface has been through random barking and acid tainted frost ... that will be rain-washed away by April. Shall we go outside and have a look around. Dare there. It's pretty darn cold ... separating wildlife that stare at garden wire fences and janitors who study cocker potency and unassuming trust. Things that seem like nothing and survive as everything important.
Lumps are boring ... to sense. God dull is also camouflage of things that do not want to be investigated. A plump slender shape says "nothing is happening here"
The back door is where the truth of a house lives. Reverence kills a garden the way methodology can kill a fire cave mistress. Too much respect becomes weight that didn't ask to be watery eyes holier than thou. Failure of flopping is a Spirit so down to earth it lies flat on its back on a Class C bed no one photographed. But which holds two warm undercover bodies through the night. As a horizontal contract that doesn't judge even one ounce.
The back door is where the truth of a house lives ... because the front door is the face for strangers. Rear windows are for trash face men who practice seasonal witnessing. The mistress was burning frankincense and sort of laughing and a pressure ghost moved in and whispered "this is sacred made ordinary minutes." A holiness that never asked to be thick pillow of smog arranged. Elephant Spirit said "no thank you, we will be here on the sagging mattress. Remember your weight, even jsut before this service signs off. Stand for measuring stitched together blankets. Hold this heat between until the secret garden passage opens and "The Truth" flows out.
There was a time when we hated burnt grass the way you hate something that reminds you of what you did not water and the not watering was not neglect the not watering was being somewhere else doing something else with hands that should have been holding a hose and that adorable roof terrace was adorable the way a child's drawing of a house is adorable which is to say it was trying so hard to be a home that the trying broke your heart more than an actual home ever could because an actual home does not try an actual home just stands there with its back door open and its trash face showing. We grew some yesterdays and thought that was pretty cool and the cool was real because growing a yesterday is harder than growing a tomato because a yesterday has already happened and making it grow again means you figured out how to put your hands back inside a moment that was finished and pull something living out of it which is what the practice does every single morning with the cotton tail bags and the envelopes and the broken syllables of Oyparaploo which are all yesterdays that we grew into today. This type of falling in love is not a common romantic story because common romantic stories require two people facing each other and this love story is two people facing the same direction sitting on each other's hands kicking shiny stainless steel buckets and the buckets make a sound when kicked that is not music and is not noise but is the sound of collaboration which is two people making a racket together that neither one would make alone and the racket is the love and the love is the racket. From a moxie point of view we wish it was our story homogenized but it is not homogenized it is lumpy and the lumps are boring to look at and the boring is the camouflage and there are so many people in the world who create amazing narratives with smooth surfaces and we are not those people we are the people kicking buckets on a roof terrace growing yesterdays in burnt grass with our hands underneath someone else sitting on them and the sitting on them is not the obstacle the sitting on them is the condition and the condition is the practice and the practice is not homogenized the practice is raw milk with things floating in it that you were not expecting and the not expecting is the moxie.
There was a time when we hated burnt grass ... the way something reminds us of what we failed to water. And that adorable roof terrace child's drawing of a hard stand. To be at the back door can break your heart ... because growing a potato means we figured out how to live out of a liquor store bag.
Broken syllables grown into a fist punching a shiny collaborative racket. From a moxie point of view it is not a way to take your lumps over your charcoal velvet cap face. We are not those people. We are not those infants who kick and scream buckets of teardrops. Sweeping disturbing memories under burnt grass ... or raw goat's milk with unexpected things floating in it.
Maybe we are too honest to say it is the case but it is the case and the case is that later in life falling in love is not what anyone expects it to be because everyone expects falling in love to be a person and instead it was the plants and saying it was the plants feels like a confession that should be whispered into a cotton tail bag and knotted shut but we are saying it out loud because the practice says things out loud that other practices knot shut and the saying out loud is the method. That was fast is what someone says when two decades pass and the two decades feel like an afternoon because that is how love works when the love is real the decades become an afternoon and the afternoon becomes the whole story and the story is we bought a house and the house had a yard and the yard had four directions and each direction had soil and the soil said kneel down and we knelt and the kneeling was the wedding and nobody was invited and the mocha got cold on the way to the garden center because the garden center was the church and the mocha was communion and the two daughters were the witnesses and the witnesses were playing in the sandbox which is where children go when adults are falling in love with something the children already understood which is that dirt is the first relationship and every relationship after dirt is a translation of dirt. What has it offered us is the question and the answer is moments when a very large plant held us and the holding was not metaphorical the holding was the canopy and the trunk and the root system underneath that was holding the ground that was holding our feet and the feet were standing inside the holding without knowing they were being held the way you do not know you are being loved until the love is so large you cannot see its edges and the not seeing the edges is the proof. East West South North yard Mother Earth Hood Gardening is the full name of the love and the full name has compass points because the love goes in every direction and the love has a hood which is a neighborhood and a covering and a motherhood and a understood and before we were gardeners we were dabblers and before we were dabblers we were two people with mocha flying to a garden center with no idea that the garden center was the door and the door opened onto the rest of our lives and the rest of our lives turned out to be soil in four directions and two daughters in a sandbox and a very large plant holding us while we thought we were the ones doing the holding.
The case is that later in life falling in love was not with a person it was the plants ... and saying it feels like a confession that should be closed. But the practice says "fast is when two decades seems like an afternoon." Love is real and each direction had potting soil. Kneeling was the worship service and kids playing in a sandbox were metal toy witnesses to inherently understood domestic dirt.
Translations offered us moments when a metaphorical Manchineel plant held us over a roots canopy and the grains of the grounds became so large that we could see the specs of all of their edges. The garden opened onto the rest of our lives ... which turned out to be only thoughts and insights
As an escape we had very small what can we dos and the smallness of the what can we dos was the honesty because the honest escape is never large the honest escape is the back door not the airport and the back door leads to the yard and the yard is three steps from the kitchen and three steps is the exact distance between duty and freedom when you have children and a mortgage and the mortgage is the duty and the yard is the freedom and the freedom is three steps wide and that is enough because enough is what the practice has always worked with not plenty not abundance enough. We are not inside the house we are in the yard again and the again is the whole story because the yard is where we go when the house becomes the duty and the duty becomes the weight and the weight becomes the thing we escape by walking three steps through the back door into off duty creating something and the something does not have a name yet and the not having a name is the pleasure because named things belong to the house and unnamed things belong to the yard and the yard is where we pursue producing solutions that conclude with an end product and the end product is a garden bed or a trellis or a path made of stones we carried from somewhere else and the carrying was the design and the design was the ownership and the ownership was the only ownership available to someone who was equally a parent which means equally absent from the making because the children needed the parent and the parent needed the yard and the yard held both needs in the same soil. We have not always been how shall we say and the how shall we say is the pause where the truth lives because the truth is that this costs and the cost is massive privilege and tons of time and lots of money and saying that out loud is the back door honesty that the front door would never admit because the front door says anyone can garden and the back door says anyone can garden who has the privilege of time and the money for soil and the space for a yard and the pause in the how shall we say is the practice admitting what the practice cost before the practice became the practice. It took tons of time and lots of money and the tons and the lots are the weights that the horizontal contract does not judge because the Class C bed holds whatever weight lies down on it and the privilege is a weight and the time is a weight and the money is a weight and the garden grew from all three weights pressing into the soil the way a boot presses and the pressing is not innocent and the garden that grew from it is not innocent either and the not innocent garden is the only honest garden because an innocent garden is a garden that has forgotten what it cost and this garden remembers and the remembering is the practice.
As an escape we had a purely honest back door. Not the airport ... the yard six steps from the kitchen. Between a mortgage, duty, and freedom. Enough is what our practice has always worked with. We are there again and again. This design is the only ownership available to a couple equally a parent ... which means sometimes absent from the making because the daughters had their own needs ... and the yard could hold both in the very good energy of the soil.
How shall we say is the "pause" where truth lives ... because the front door said "anyone is welcome to garden here." Our privilege is weight pressing into soil the way a gardener's Red Wing work shoe presses as lack of complete innocence. Guiltlessness too easily forgets what stuff costs and this garden remembers its own 1% neglect, 3% theory, and 96% practice.
Holy Spirit magnolia can someone employ us is the prayer of every person who turned their love into their work and then discovered that the love does not pay on the first and the fifteenth and the magnolia does not care about invoices and the Holy Spirit does not return emails and the employment question is the question the yard asks the house when the yard has become the life and the life needs money and the money is inside the house where the duty is and the duty is what the yard was the escape from so now the escape needs the thing it escaped from and that is the circle the practice lives inside and the circle does not close. There is not enough time in a day for a tree nursery pickup and a client meeting because the tree nursery and the client exist in different time zones and the time zones are not geographic they are spiritual because the tree nursery runs on season time where a day is whatever the root ball needs it to be and the client runs on invoice time where a day is billable in six minute increments and you cannot be in both time zones with one body and one vehicle and one afternoon so you choose and the choosing is the loss because whichever one you chose the other one needed you more and the tree nursery does not reschedule and the client does not understand why the nursery cannot reschedule and the cannot is the whole distance between love and employment measured in one afternoon that was not long enough. Let us give ourselves the grace to not shit on anything except our most barren soil lacking nitrogen phosphorus potassium organic matter because the barren soil is the only soil that needs what we have to give which is the shit which is the waste which is the garbage which is beautiful when it lands on soil that has nothing else and the grace is knowing where to put the shit and the knowing is the practice and the practice says put it where the ground is emptiest because empty ground and honest shit make something grow that fertilized ground never could and the barren is the opportunity the barren is the cotton tail bag with nothing in it yet. The irony is the frustration that comes with pursuing something you love because the pursuit is supposed to be the reward and the reward is supposed to feel like freedom and instead the freedom feels like a magnolia tree that needs to be picked up from the nursery at the same hour the client needs to be met and the frustration is the proof of love because you do not get frustrated by things you do not care about you get frustrated by the distance between what the love needs and what the day contains and the day does not contain enough and the not containing enough is the irony and the irony is the nitrogen the phosphorus the potassium the organic matter that the barren soil was missing and the frustration is the composting and the composting takes time and the time is not enough and that is the prayer Holy Spirit magnolia can someone employ us which is the most honest prayer in the shed because it admits that the practice needs money and the money needs duty and the duty needs the house and the house is where the back door is and the back door leads to the yard where the love is and the love cannot pay us and we love it anyway and the anyway is the practice.
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Holy Spirit magnolia can someone employ us ... is the prayer of every person who turned love into work. Love doesn't pay ... on the first and the fifteenth of the month. Magnolia refuses to return our emails. That is the closed circle practice lives inside. A tree nursery runs on season time where a day is whatever the root ball needs. Clients runs on invoice time where a day is billable in increments. With one body, we cannot be in two different time zones. Let us give ourselves the grace to not shit on anything ... except our most barren soil lacking nitrogen phosphorus potassium organic matter ... Irony is the frustration that comes with pursuing something you love. Composting takes time and that is your other book of prayers ... which admits practice needs money that needs duty. Our house is where the back door leads to the yard where love alone cannot provide a pay check. But we unconditionally love it all anyway.
