Bartholomew
could smell the soil the moment he stepped off his front step. The garden was close to his house, but he
never would have thought that he would smell it from his house. It had rained just enough that morning to clear
the air and allow, for a brief time, the essential smells of the earth to rise,
reminding Bartholomew of this basic human experience – he lives on a
planet. It was one of those mornings
that are so still one begins to perceive how active everything is. Smells rose
in the air and the sounds of decay lay at his feet. Songs came from the trees on the edge of the
garden: cardinal songs, robin songs and wrens.
These songs were being answered by other song trees in the
neighborhood. Bartholomew could even
taste the flowering birch trees nearby, although he did not know the origin of
that sweet something on his tongue.
He set to
work in the garden. Weeds were popping
their heads up, waiting to be decapitated, plucked from their home, scattered,
trampled, exhausted and dismembered.
They seem to thrive on this treatment thought Bartholomew and chuckled
to himself as he thought about what a violent hobby gardening is. His goal this weekend was to hoe and pluck
his victims throughout the whole garden, except Mr. McBardon's hedged
plot. Mr. McBardon had made it clear,
several times, that he would maintain his own plot. After weeding, Bartholomew hoped to cover the
ground with mulch. Uncle Jeffrey had
dropped off a load the night before.
After a few
hours, Bartholomew decided to take a break and have some water. He sat down on a stump, one of several in the
break area of the garden, and pulled a cold steel bottle of water out of a
small bag of sustenance he brought with him.
The sky was a bright blue, like only a spring sky can be, and there were
just a few small whispy clouds here and there.
Bartholomew was happy as he sat there taking in the world around his
garden. He started to go down the list
of things that were good in his life but stopped himself by saying,
“Whatever,... life is just good.”
“Wha?”
Bartholomew heard someone say as a figure rose out of Mr.McBardon's hedge.
“Mr.
McBardon?! How long have you been
there?” asked a startled Bartholomew.
“Huh? Wha?
Oh, all morning. Just weeding.”
Bartholomew
thought for a moment about how he never saw Mr. McBardon working in the garden
ever since the first day. Mr. McBardon's
“hedge” had grown tall enough that if he was weeding on his knees nobody would
see him. This is what Bartholomew
assumed had happened. Or else, Mr.
McBardon had slept in his plot and was just waking up.
“How's your
plot doing?” asked Bartholomew.
“Fine, just
fine,” Mr. McBardon blurted out, as if to say, “No need for you to come
over. Stay there, everything is fine.”
“I'm going
to set up the sprinkler in a little while.
Would you like me to water your plot, too?” asked Bartholomew.
“Uhm, uh,
yeah, I guess that would be fine. It's
due.”
Mr.
McBardon gazed up at the blue sky and then quietly sank behind his hedge, back
to his private world of weeding.
* * * *
Topping and
Charlotte joined Bartholomew in the garden one day to tie up the tomato
plants. Uncle Jeffrey and Aunt Josephine
had dropped off tomato cages the night before.
By that time, some of the plants were big enough that Bartholomew had
his doubts about fitting these cages around the plants without breaking some
branches. The three worked together
carefully dropping a cage down over the plant, pulling its branches through the
wires and, where needed, tying the plant to the cage with torn sheets that Bartholomew's
cat, Oliver, had ruined.
They had
successfully accomplished the procedure on three plants when Topping barked,
“Damn!” as he snapped off a branch.
“I hardly
bent it! Man, these babies just 'go,'
don't they?”
“It's
okay. I'm sure were all going to break a
few toda... Aggh!,” said Bartholomew as
he snapped a branch, too.
Charlotte
laughed. “I guess, I'm next.”
The next
few plants were saved from any harm.
Charlotte was enjoying watching Topping carefully protect the tomato
branches as the cage came down and then surgically place the branches through
the cage holes. This was a side to
Topping that Charlotte loved. He could
be so gentle, kind and thoughtful with his heart and his hands that she
couldn't help but be in love with him.
Sometimes, when Topping was like this, Charlotte would imagine his kind
hands touching her. She found herself
getting excited about being done with the gardening and arriving home to be
alone with Topping... or maybe in the car on the way home... or maybe if
Bartholomew would leave, they could be alone in the garden – outdoors.
As they
were placing the next cage over a rather large plant, Bartholomew felt
something bump up against his leg. It
was Hump-Pug, doing what Hump-Pug does – humping leg.
Topping
laughed.
“Not now
Hump-Pug,” said Bartholomew. “Get off!”
Hump-Pug,
of course, did not listen. She humped
and panted, “I have a lover, I know I do...”
“What is
that whining?” asked Topping.
“Who
knows,” said Bartholomew. “She must live
around here somewhere, she's been here a lot while I've been gardening.”
“Ugh, she
looks a mess,” said Charlotte. “All
those burrs and seeds in her coat. Poor
dog.”
Exasperated,
Bartholomew groaned, “We might as well stop.
She's not going to let us finish.
She will keep jumping on our legs until we leave.”
“Wait a
minute,” said Topping who ran to get another tomato cage. He carefully took the largest cage and placed
it over Hump-Pug and shoved its spikes into the ground. “There, now she won't bug us,” Topping
laughed mockingly.
“How could
you do that?” asked a distraught
Charlotte.
Topping
laughed more while the little pug tried to first push over the cage and then to
try and hump it.
“God, the
animal’s just out of control. What a
dumb dog. Let's finish caging the
tomatoes,” said Topping.
This was
the side of Topping that Charlotte did not
like. There are times when he can be
insensitive to animals and people.
Charlotte liked that Topping had a sense of humor, but sometimes he
laughed at the cruelest things.
Sometimes getting a job done was more important than the people, and
small animals, around him. She didn't
understand this streak in him. Without
realizing it, she was no longer excited to get home.
Hump-Pug
did not seem to mind the confinement, and she eventually took the opportunity
to take a quick nap. In the meantime,
Topping, Bartholomew and Charlotte caged all the tomato plants that needed it
and tied up the larger ones. They pulled
the cage off of Hump-Pug and placed it in the middle of a patch of pole beans
while the little pug awoke and jumped from leg to leg.
* * * *
One hot and
humid mid-summer day, Claire came by to help Bartholomew with some weeding and
watering. The garden had been producing
greens for a couple of weeks and the other plants were growing tall. The work was rather easy as the vegetables
were now starting to crowd out the weeds.
Bartholomew enjoyed Claire's presence.
She was direct and he didn't have to assume anything about her. He found this made it simple for him to share
himself, too.
“So, you
are moving out of Ned's place?” asked Bartholomew.
“Yeah. At the end of the month,” said Claire.
Bartholomew
stopped weeding for a moment. “I'm sorry
to hear that,” he said.
“It's
okay. It isn't going to work out. I'm not sure why we got together in the first
place...” Claire stopped herself and
looked at Bartholomew. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“I just
want you to know that Ned hasn't been blabbing stuff to me,” assured
Bartholomew. “In fact, I haven't seen
him for quite awhile. He seems too have
decided to not come around.”
“I'm sorry
about that. It's his choice, but
obviously he feels uncomfortable with some of our shared friends.”
“I wouldn't
put too much of this on your splitting up.
Ned used to come over a lot but our relationship was always a bit
awkward. I really don't know what to do
when he gets so quiet. He can go the
longest time without saying anything.”
“Oh god,
some of his pauses are so painful,” Claire said relieved that someone else had
noticed this same quality about Ned. She
began to laugh. “There was this one time
I asked him where he wanted to go out to eat and he stared at me for two
minutes without saying anything. Two
minutes! There was a clock on the wall
behind him and I actually timed it. Two
minutes!”
“Whoa,”
said Bartholomew.
“How are
things with The Nanny?” asked Claire.
Bartholomew
bent down and started weeding again.
“Things are... fine.”
“That
didn't sound very convincing,” responded Claire.
“Well, I
don't know...I feel funny. I've never talked about my relationship with a woman
with a woman before. It seems odd.”
“Go ahead,”
encouraged Claire. “I promise I won't
bite...or laugh.”
“Well,
things are a little strange,” began Bartholomew. “When we get together we have a great
time. We talk about everything and
anything. We laugh and we talk about hard stuff and we do fun things...”
“But...”
added Claire.
“But,”
continued Bartholomew, “whenever we are...intimate...she always stops things
at... second or third base. We've... you
know...touched all over... and made out and even spent the night together. But we never go... all the way. It's getting frustrating.”
“Wow, do
you feel like she really likes you?”
Bartholomew
winced at this question and tossed his weeds onto a pile. “I think so.
She says so.”
“A lot of
people say a lot of things, Bartholomew.
Do you feel like she really cares about you?”
“I think
so. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like
she is trying to teach me something instead of being there with me. Like she thinks someone else is supposed to
be my lover. She's just filling in until
then.”
“Ouch,”
said Claire.
“What do
you mean?” asked Bartholomew.
“Is that
what you're feeling or what you think she's feeling?”
Bartholomew
thought for a moment. “It's what I think
she is thinking,... I think.”
“Well, then,
Ouch,” said Claire.
“Yeah,
ouch,” agreed Bartholomew.
Claire bent
down and picked a few weeds. “So, what
you gonna do?”
Bartholomew
stared off at the poplar trees, their leaves were dead still on this hot
stifling day. He wiped sweat from his
brow and noticed a beetle scabbering across the soil. “I don't know, what should I do?” he said
looking to Claire.
“Dump her,”
said Claire without hesitation.
“Really?
Just dump her?”
“Yes, dump
her. Or, well, end it. If she's not really interested in you for
herself, then why would you want to be with her? Look, I don't know why Ned let me stay at his
place so long. Actually, I do know...it
was the sex. But we weren't good for
each other. If you're not good for each
other, then don't be together. Just end
it and start finding someone else.”
Bartholomew
thought for a while. Claire went back to
weeding. Eventually, Bartholomew's body
moved to the green pepper plants and removed the unwanted quack grass and
dandelions, but his mind stayed in the same place for the rest of the
morning. They finally took a water break
and as they sat on the stumps in the garden, Bartholomew asked, “So, I don't have
to try to make things work with The Nanny?”
“Nope. Not if it's not going to work.”
“I don't have
to...”
“Bartholomew!”
said Claire. “Do you two have a verbal
or written commitment to each other?”
“No,” said
Bartholomew as if following an order.
“Is she
pregnant?”
“God, no!”
“She's
acting like she's not supposed to be your lover, right?”
“Right,”
answered Bartholomew.
“You are
frustrated in the relationship?”
“Yes, I
am,” said Bartholomew.
“Then stop
seeing her and move on,” Claire commanded, her eyes boring into Bartholomew's.
His eyes,
giving in to hers, bowed to the ground. “You're
right. I should end it. Wow!
That feels good to say out loud,” declared Bartholomew with a grin on
his face.
“Bartholomew,
you are the one who gets to determine where your life is going. You get to decide if you are enjoying
it. If you are not, you can
change it. That's one thing I did learned from my spoken word classes,”
said Claire.
* * * *
Aunt
Jospehine and Uncle Jeffrey stopped by the garden one morning with a trailer
full of mulch. Bartholomew was in the
garden weeding and harvesting vegetables.
“You gotta
see this tomato – it's HUGE!” said Barthholomew holding up a red lumpy
hand.
“Wow,” said
Uncle Jeffrey.
“That is
quite large,” responded Aunt Josephine.
“So, is
this Wednesday night going to be our first harvest dinner?” asked Uncle
Jeffrey.
“Absolutely,”
crowed Bartholomew. “You guys coming?”
“We
wouldn't miss it,” they responded in unison.
Bartholomew
went back to harvesting vegetables, carefully placing them in a fabric
bag. Uncle Jeffrey picked a snap pea off
a plant and started to eat. Aunt
Josephine followed his lead and laughed as she bit into the crisp green
shell. They let Bartholomew harvest the
vegetables – enjoy the fruits of his labor and his idea. Aunt Josephine and Uncle Jeffrey emptied the
mulch into a pile just off the curb.
Aunt Josephine had brought some of her special punch and invited
Bartholomew to take a break. She poured out the punch into plastic cups, handed one to
each of the men in her life and said, “Here's to Bartholomew and his
garden.” They raised their cups and
clinked them together. “Here, here,”
said Uncle Jeffrey.
Bartholomew
downed his punch and held out his cup for more.
Aunt Josephine gladly obliged him with another cup full.
“Seriously,
Bartholomew,” said Aunt Josephine, “you
have done a great thing by making this garden.
Both Uncle Jeffrey and I have gotten to know your friends better and Mr.
McBardon. And... we just notice how
happy you are. It makes us very happy to
see you this way, Bartholomew. It has
been a long time and I know that your parent's would be very proud of
you.” Aunt Josephine moved forward and
hugged Bartholomew.
“Yes,”
added Uncle Jeffrey, “and you have provided us all with such a delicious
outcome. You really do have a green
thumb.”
Bartholomew
blushed.
“C'mon,”
said Aunt Josephine, “let's go make some gespachio out of that huge tomato,” as
she put her arm around Bartholomew's shoulders and guided him toward his
house. Uncle Jeffrey quickly ran over to
Mr.McBardon's house to turn on the hose and water the garden while they
cooked. The sound of water squirted
through the hose until it shot out of the sprinkler in a big arc moving slowly
across the garden. Uncle Jeffrey almost
caught up with them when they heard a scream.
“Agggh!”
yelled Mr. McBardon who suddenly sprung up from behind his hedge. The sprinkler pelted him with water as he
jumped through the hedge and hobbled as quickly as he could to his house. All the while making duck-like noises and
running his hands through his wet hair: “mah, mah, mah, mah...” He disappeared into his door. Uncle Jeffrey and Bartholomew laughed. Aunt Josephine looked at them sternly, but
then she couldn't help herself and they all laughed as they went to
Bartholomew's little house to make some soup.
___________________________________________________________
Bartholomew in the Garden is the 30th story in The Book of Bartholomew.
The story is written and illustrated by Mark Granlund.
Bartholomew spends some time in the garden on different days with different people doing different activities and talking about different things.
