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Survival's Source: Rediscovering the Green

© Leda Meredith

Two men from the phone company are tromping through the community garden, installing a new cable. One of them walks over to where I am crouching down beside the six foot high pole-and-string trellises my husband built.

"What are those for?"
"Beans."
"String beans?"
"Yes."
"And they'll climb up those things? Where are the bean plants?"

I hold out my hand to show him the beans I am planting.

"Go on! You're going to get string beans from those?"

In the city, survival is often several steps removed from its actual source and almost always involves money and human interaction. I pay rent for a shelter I didn't build; pay a utilities company for my cooking fire, grab lunch at the corner deli, and turn on a tap when I need water. The thousands of other humans I walk beside each day are more likely to be a source of danger than floods or wild animals. And yet...

There is a habit I've had since childhood of identifying the green around me, especially in a place that is new to me. Even gazing out of a car window, part of my mind is always aware of which wild edible and medicinal plants are present. Look, there's yarrow in case I get a cut, and plantain if I get stung or bug-bit. There's dandelion, burdock, and wild garlic: lunch, if I want it to be. Could I provide us with food and medicine here? Yes. Now I can go back to whatever else I was thinking about.

The source of our survival isn't our checking accounts, and never has been. It's in the seeds and the soil and the rain and the sunlight. It's in the remarkable fertility of this planet, in the green that surrounds us even in the city. A salad of wild cress, violet leaves, and sorrel that I picked myself reconnects me to that source. There is a wonderful sense of adventure that comes from knowing how to identify those plants and use them, and a source of security that cannot be taken away from me.

What about those bean trellises? The garden is my connection to the cycles that are the Earth's heart. Yes, I could buy string beans at the store. No, they wouldn't taste as good. But there is more to it than that. There is paying close attention to the weather and the season (Is it too early to plant yet? How long until harvest?). There is being grateful for rainfall rather than complaining about it as most urban dwellers do. There is having enough to share, which always makes me feel incredibly wealthy and grateful.

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