How I Wrote My New Book, "Garden Disruptors," 4

“I read it all. And I like it. But there’s a lot about me in it. I was a different person back then” Jim focused on his work on the long counter. He pulled apart palm leaves to make them into thin straps like he was planning to weave a rattan chair seat.

I held my breath a minute. Then said, “The way this book’s evolved, I couldn’t write this book without you. I need us to talk about old times, and I need your help with memories and your permission.”

We stood six feet apart, bundled up.  The doors to the floral studio stood open. Still, his floral supplies, dried vines, giant bean pods, raffia, and old okra pods smelled rich. Potpourri-y. Nothing like my grandmother’s florist, full of green smells and ribbon. She wouldn’t recognize this as floral art. She’d have found it impossible to stand apart, not to lean in or hug, but she’d be ok with the doors open Covid rule. She’d worked in a cooler half her life. I surveyed the wall of dry supplies. About a third of them came from plants I’d given him the seeds of. When my plants were dying, I got a few seeds and dumped everything else in the compost pile. Jim saved stuff. He saw beauty in the decay. I took down some old luffa gourds and shook them like maracas while he wove the palm ribbons into a wedding- cake-sized scaffolding he’d built of bamboo.  The palm leaves make impossible arcs and exponential curves.

 

“Lots of those stories need to be told. There are lessons there for sure.” He laughed a forced, incredulous laugh, “But some of the stories, they’re not exactly how I remember them.”

He focused on weaving. I watched his gray beard for a sign: a smile or grimace. I couldn’t read him; I had to wait. But I was anxious. The entire arc of the story of the book I wanted to write, hell, my entire professional life since college, had depended on this man’s advice.

“We sure don’t remember some things the same way. Do we now?” His tone told me this wasn’t a question but more of a warning. He reached to click a Zoom link on the laptop. “Hold on. I’m gonna be on mute so we can talk. I need to be logged into this class, though.”  A Japanese woman with a perfect bun said, “We started tight, then let all the midolino canes bend and flare like a basket, then we’ll bring it back together to a tight bundle. That starts the nautilus spiral, and we'll taper down from here.” In the screen, she stood at a cleared work table, a green chalkboard behind. She was in black, short sleeves. It looked warm and clean in her world.

“You learn from her? She looks very proper. Her studio is so tidy. Not like she’d get your organic elegance,” I said. He rolled his eyes, “Don’t let the respectable lady drag fool you. I know her, talented beyond words, but she is a wild woman.”  She held up a basket-like structure, half the canes woven, half waiting to be directed. With graceful, simple hand movements, she turned the mess into sleek curves; a nautilus, a galaxy, then maybe angel wings, and talked easily, “But we can take this extension, bend it back, and make it something more interesting. Anything is possible.” 

 Jim’s rough hands, bent rough, hairy jute-skinned, were busy. I don’t know what he was seeing but I saw the windswept skeletons of trees on the dunes coming to life in front of him.

.

I looked to the screen and said, “What she’s doing, what you’re doing. It’s the same. You’ve trained your hands; there’s muscle memory and a vision that work together to turn flexible stems into the structure. Then, you’ll find the flowers, the sparkles that this structure will show off in the way you envision.  Different from how she envisions it. Kind of like our memories.” 

He ignored the last bit, waved a hand like a symphony conductor, and turned on an exaggerated, nasal accent like the teacher of our floral design class back in college, “Pulling, tucking, flexing, adding tension. Find beauty in the tension between what the flowers want to do and what we want them to do.”

Kind of like writing and editing, I thought. Jim and I had gardened together for decades. He’d usually set the vision, the structure, then let me run with the plants. Separately, we’d nursed new passions; me writing, him floral sculptures.  

A chilly breeze blew through the studio, and a snow of fluffy little silver helicopter seeds floated by.  It could have been a magical moment but I killed it with a garden comment, “Are those Hairy Ball Milkweed seeds? That thing a weed, and it’s so lanky, such a bad garden plant.” 

He cut his eyes at me without moving his head. “Such a plant snob. I still grow and love it. Go ahead. Write. It’s your book. And get us a bottle of wine from the fridge so we can talk about building that Botanical Garden. We might remember differently, but it’s your book. If that’s what you want, let’s talk about the old days.”

*Thanks to Jim Martin for photos of his floral art.