Talking like Chauncey Gardiner out there
Jerzi Kosinski's beloved character in the novel "Being There" understood everything in relation to the garden and to the turn of seasons. It's not a bad way to look at things.
Zinnias were a welcome addition to the garden this summer. They’re beginning to fade now. But as Chauncey Gardiner explained, “In the garden, growth has its season.”
Summer’s End showed up here with random shoves of hot wind that knocked down one of the patio umbrellas twice before I had the sense to crank it closed. Then the wind pushed it over again, in the opposite direction, and it landed on our wobbly fountain, where concrete lovebirds huddle with chipped wings. Knocked them over, too, but I set them upright. I don’t know if the fountain still works. I haven’t plugged it in all summer, and the dogs and cats just use it as a water trough.
The sky was a sickly yellow-brown for three days, but not because Portland burned down again. It’s smoke from wildfires. Forest and range fires, volatile and sometimes deadly, are part of the new normal in the Pacific Northwest, I guess.
“We’re doomed,” I said when I saw the sun looking like this through the smoke. The whole day felt cursed. It wasn’t.
But it rained last night, a gentle sprinkle that I can still hear this morning.
I don’t know what to do about the fires, or the climate change that accelerates them. I don’t know what to do about the war between Russia and Ukraine, except to take heart in Ukraine’s fighting spirit and Russia’s piss poor technology.
I don’t know how to solve our housing and healthcare problems. I still pay attention to the news, digital print versions only, no TV, but I’m trying to avoid outrage over politics. Trying to, I said. Until it’s time to vote. And then I hope we all turn out like hell to vote them down and vote them out. Damn that traitor, that #VileBuffoon, and his cowardly, cynical enablers and his stupid, dangerous followers.
It’s healthier to step back from the bitterness of our times. Stay vigilant, of course, and vote like crazy when the time comes, like I said. Vote them down and vote them out.
My world view narrowed after I retired from journalism, and it’s pretty much just my yard and garden that I study now when I’m trying to figure things out. Being there, in the garden, helps me think things through, or consider new points of view.
Thus the reference to Chauncey Gardiner. “I am Chance, the gardener,” as he introduces himself to people who hear him wrong.
You should read “Being There” if you haven’t; I’m going to find it and re-read it. We might have a copy in the attic. The 1979 movie starring Peter Sellers was good, too. In the novel, Chance is a simple-minded gardener who through a series of misunderstandings, presumptions and happenstance becomes a celebrity figure in political and economic circles.
He has lived an isolated life; gardening and television are his primary reference points. Chance the gardener understands the world in terms of plant life cycles, and he takes his behavioral cues and speaking manner from TV. “I like to watch,” he tells people.
By literal accident, he falls in with influential people in Washington, D.C. At a social to-do, even the President presses him for economic policy advice. Chauncey Gardiner tells people, “As long as the roots are not severed, all will be well.” It’s taken as great insight, metaphorical wisdom. “In the spring there will be growth,” Chauncey says, to much acclaim.
Being increasingly simple minded myself, I now make Chauncey Gardiner-like observations and pronouncements when I pace the garden.
“A plant’s story is written on its leaves,” I might tell myself while examining a withered tomato leaf. “A garden that is healthy for pollinators becomes healthy for humans,” I might say as I watch the bumblebees work my raspberries.
“Pruning in hot weather risks damage and does not guarantee benefit,” I explain when pressed to restore order and tidy appearance to the garden. “Sometimes a cut not made is the kindest cut of all.”
I have all kinds of Chauncey thoughts bouncing around my head when I inspect my flowers and vegetables. It occurred to me early in the summer that the cucumbers in the middle raised bed were at war with the rangy tomatoes in the third bed just behind them. They grappled for climbing space in the border region between the boxes, until the forces on both sides fell back to concentrate on producing fruit. The cukes may have been exhausted by the fight. They produced well at first but browned up and shut down when we had that hot streak.
“Wars in the garden are much like the wars of men,” I would intone to the President. “There is no victory in dominion, both plants falter, and war’s glory is not green.”
The front raised bed is a battlefield strewn with dead and wounded cherry tomatoes. The red Sweet Millions are hanging on, but the Sungolds have about had it and are starting to crack and drop. Yellow Pear tomatoes grow in the bed with these guys, and last a bit longer.
War often comes to mind when I pace the garden. Probably because of Ukraine and its fight against Russia. Gardens may seem genteel, but I see plants competing for space, water and soil, and it’s clear there’s a lot of pushing and shoving going on out there. Look how they curl their leaves and cup their flowers to capture water for themselves at the expense of their neighbors.
Have you ever planted corn seeds and seen them come up? Which seedlings push through the soil first and become the tallest young ones in the row? The ones you accidentally planted right next to each other, that’s who. Sometimes they’ll compete like that all summer and both fizzle, if you don’t get grim with your thinning. Same with carrots.
“In the garden, each must have its space, and some must make way for others,” Chauncey Gardiner would testify to the Senate, baffling both sides but causing the senators to pretend they get it and leap to their feet to shout huzzah.
In the back bed, the hybrid Celebrity tomatoes, left, and the Heirloom Marriage Genuwine, right, grew in intense yet collaborative competition.
I’ve never had such a boisterous crop of big slicers, and I’ll probably make another batch of pasta sauce out of them. Tomorrow, probably. Maybe.
The hybrid and the heirloom grew in tandem, each one thick with aggressive vines that spilled over the edge of the raised bed to display their fine tomatoes. The heirloom even grew up into an overhanging bush and draped a couple tomatoes across its branches. The varieties, so different in background, didn’t seem to fight for space. Rather, each filled its half of the bed with glossy side-by-side displays.
“In the garden, growth may seem wild and uncontrolled,” my inner Chauncey Gardiner would say in a guest lecture to a university economics class. “And yet, order grows from disorder, and production stems from competition.”
The students, of course, will want to know if such insight will be on the test. “In the garden, every day is a test,” I’ll respond. “Some will fail.”
Dahlias are the showboats of the sideyard for the second year in a row, bursting into bloom like fireworks, or in complex geometric forms.
Chauncey studies flowers carefully, as you can imagine. First the quince and the lilacs, then the roses and bearded iris, poppies, lilies and so on, from bush and bulb, until the dashing dahlias jump from the ground and take over the show.
“In the garden, each flower will have its say,” Chauncey might say. “Some shout for attention, but some among them speak with quieter voices. The gardener must hear them all.”
Part of the zinnia patch that was new to the garden this year. Hard to look on them and not feel cheered.
The truth, I’ll admit, is that I let the garden get away from me again this year. Especially the vegetables. But I like to think the garden exploded in glorious fashion. Raucous bounty, is how I would describe the growth.
Of course I showered my brothers and sisters with texted photos of my garden triumphs. I have to laugh because they’re better gardeners than I am — certainly more knowledgable — and I like to tease them. My approach to gardening is undisciplined, compared to them. Any success I have is more likely due to luck and location rather than skill.
Compared to them, I’m Chance, the gardener, not Chauncey Gardiner.
Is there a zinnia variety called Zingo Zango? Apparently not, but seems like there should be.
“In the garden, work is never done, but work is never resented,” my inner Chance the gardener might say if someone asked him. “Its roots are in the soil, but the garden blooms most beautifully in the heart of the grower.”
That’s my harvest at Summer’s End.
Good piece, Eric
Loved this one, captured that end-of-summer melancholy, as I watch my garden give itself over to fall. 🍁🍂