43

 

Aside from the scary creatures I have just described, who either live in the garden or pay it random visits, there is another species that stands out, one that is mostly amiable and useful but also potentially dangerous. I am talking about gardeners who suddenly appear for a visit. They neither bite nor sting, eat their way into tree trunks or gnaw at buds, and the truth is they are usually as congenial and pleasant as the flowers they grow. Advice can be garnered from them; bulbs, seeds, and tubers can be exchanged with them. But they often show up unannounced saying, “We heard you grow wildflowers, too.”

“That’s true,” I say.

“So we’ve come to take a look.”

And then they take a look. In other words, they wander through my garden, they survey and they scan. On the one hand, they do not trample over plants like other visitors, unable to distinguish nettles from anemones. On the other hand, it is easy to see how the expression on their faces becomes increasingly grim, particularly when they see a shrub that has been planted in a place where there is either insufficient sunlight or too much sunlight, or where the soil is unsuitable for growth.

After this, the examination begins. In a nonchalant kind of way, they quote names of plants I am unfamiliar with, like “saltmarsh aster” or “hawk’s beard” and when I admit to not knowing these names they assume a critical expression. They are right. To my sorrow, I am not among those familiar with all two thousand and seven varieties of plants our country is blessed with—which is more than much larger countries have. I recognize every single plant in my garden, of course, but I am not as proficient in the flora of the Land of Israel as other enthusiasts, certainly not professional botanists, nor do I know as much as I would like to.

Most of the other gardeners are better than I at identifying plants, but the problem does not stop here. They also want to make sure I know this. When I tell them I have cat thyme, for example, they ask which cat thyme exactly, and since I do not know, and since the very term “cat thyme” amuses me, I invent names: I tell them I have curled-up cat thyme, or cross-legged cat thyme, curly cat thyme or cropped cat thyme. By the looks on the faces of my companions, I realize I have made a huge error, and by their reprimands I understand I should have said bowlegged cat thyme or bleached cat thyme or Cretan cat thyme. Indeed, such low humor is foreign and even abhorrent to them. I can tell by their grimaces that they are thinking I am unfit for the job and that a person like me is neither proficient nor serious enough to grow so much as a tuft of dog’s-tooth grass.

In short, more than once I have surprised my interlocutors with my ignorance. Once, I recall, I was asked if I have queen mallow in my garden. Since I’d never heard that name, I said that the only mallow I know is the marshmallow growing in the bakery in Tivon where I buy caraway bread. The reaction was an expression of utter astonishment and patronizing scorn. Because anyone who does not know what queen mallow is, not to mention spotted-stalked tree mallow, little mallow, or Cretan hollyhock, is not worthy of joining the community of real wild gardeners. These, by the way, are mallow varieties I have never encountered in nature or in the recesses of my memory, but only in the index of a dictionary of plant names.

My inferiority regarding the identification of plants began at a traditional annual event called Tree Day held at the Nahalal Elementary School on the holiday of Tu BiShvat. The event had a sacred, routine structure: the pupils, the youngest of the young and the oldest of the old, from first grade to eighth grade, gathered in the nature room in small groups. Here a jar awaited them containing sprigs, flowers, stalks with leaves—according to season and species—of one hundred fifty different trees, shrubs, and flowers. A first grader was expected to identify ten of them, a second grader was expected to identify twenty, and an eighth grader—one hundred twenty!

This was a highly lucrative competition that afforded its winners eternal glory—albeit stardom that remained within the boundaries of Nahalal, but this little problem bothered no one: we all knew that nothing existed outside of the circle of Nahalal, certainly nothing of importance.

I was nine years old when we moved to Nahalal from Jerusalem. I was happy to move from city to country and I liked my new school, which to this day I remember as the nicest and best school I ever studied in. But the moniker “city boy” forever fluttered over my head, and to be a city boy and be called as much in the Nahalal of those days was to be inferior in every possible way. Add to this my lack of height, my narrow shoulders, my shortsightedness, and the fact that I was obsessed with reading—an unproductive custom—and you get a boy who was unable to integrate satisfactorily into the pioneering moshavnik experience.

It will therefore not come as a surprise that the first Tree Day filled me with horror. I knew that if I failed I would never live it down, and as is common in the collective agricultural movement, I would also bring eternal disgrace on my entire family.

The teacher of the fourth-grade class I studied in, Yaakov Matatia, prepared us for Tree Day in a very serious fashion. He personally knew every flower in the area and where it grew. On field days, he took us out to see them. We went to the so-called wadi—a small creek between Kfar Yehoshua and Nahalal—and to the “mountains,” hills upon which the village of Timrat stands today. We went up and down the dense and humid Yagor stream, and we also went out on the streets of the moshav itself, because on Tree Day we were asked to identify not only wild plants but also ornamental plants that were popular in the collective agricultural movement: blue plumbago and Cape honeysuckle, Persian lilac, California pepper tree, Oriental arborvitae, also called ironed cypress in those days, bauhinia, privet, pittosporum, various cypresses and pines, and a further ornamental tree whose name made me really laugh: the brachychiton. My mother, who knew better than I all the names of the village plants—and, more important, its people—was also worried. Right away, she organized a crash course of her own on local flora: she went out with me to the fields, gathered sprigs and jars, and formulated plant ID tests and simulations that made my father chuckle to himself.

Tree Day arrived. I entered the nature room with a heavy, anxious heart and positioned myself in front of the plants we were to identify. In fourth grade we were supposed to know the names of at least forty trees and shrubs and flowers, and I began to slowly gather them together. I identified the sweet bay right away, recalling its leaves not only from the Carmel but from another habitat: my grandmother’s jar of pickled herring. I identified the Canadian pine by its needles that grow in groups of three rather than two. I also easily identified the aforementioned brachychiton—who can forget a creature with such a funny name?

Somehow I also managed to conquer the hawthorn and two varieties of rockrose, leaped over the hurdles of spiny broom and prickly burnet, and even distinguished between the Mount Tabor oak and the Palestine oak. I recognized the pungent false yellowhead because the nose remembers better than the eyes. But the African rue, which also has a distinctive, strong fragrance, I missed.

Ultimately, I got through my first Tree Day by the skin of my teeth. I identified forty-two plants and came last in my class. Our teacher consoled me, saying, “This is very good for your first time. Next year you’ll do better.” But my mother said I ought to have identified a few more plants.

Overconspicuous expertise in any subject is quite a credible indication of the merit of those who are waving it around. But when it comes to names of plants I also pay attention to the way those names are pronounced. For example, I am very cautious about people who say “irus” instead of “iris,” a common mistake in Hebrew. It does not bode well, and if I may add: those, too, who say “vicia” by pronouncing the vowel with a terminal stress instead of a consonant with a penultimate stress may well harbor trouble under their hats.

Irises have a particularly problematic effect. I have a few Nazareth irises in my garden, and every year they are kind enough to present me with a flower or two, but I must admit that there is no real relationship between us, and my garden does not boast the more elegant irises, such as the Gilboa or coastal iris. They are too fancy for my taste, and their blossoms look like the culmination of a particularly productive day in the life of a milliner.

And not only that. I even dare to suggest that just as the iris is regarded as special and favored, so are some of those who love it: eccentric, somewhat strange people, even a species unto themselves, but I do not know whether it is the eccentricity that attracts them to the irises or the irises that make them so. Every garden influences its own influence on the soul, but iris growers and enthusiasts stand out from the crowd. It is not sufficient that they travel to the heart of darkness and beyond the seven mountains and seven seas in order to gaze at some endemic group of their precious irises; they also do things to them which I will define in clean language as unbecoming.

Let me try to explain: in comparison to my own minor self, who merely gathers seeds or wildflowers that grow in the garden, stores them, and plants them under enhanced conditions, these people carry out acts that are not worthy of printing here. In other words—and this “in other words” I will attempt to describe delicately—they participate in the actual fertilization. And if you still do not understand exactly what is going on there, I must reveal that they are in the habit of pollinating the object of their passion with bare hands, interfering in a crass and invasive manner with the flower’s most intimate moments and body parts.

Come and see for yourself: a normal person courts the love of his life with flowers, whereas these people leave their loves at home and woo the flowers themselves, and they do this not only hidden away in the relative legitimacy of their private garden; they also invade the natural habitats of irises and harass them there. Some take the pollen receptacle of one iris and, with bated breath, use it to penetrate the stigma of another; others do it with a brush, and some are not satisfied unless they actually touch it with their hands: with the tips of their fingers they gather male pollen from one flower and then touch the female stigma of another flower. Whatever you call it, this is molestation of innocent, decent flowers, not to mention indecent assault.

I now return to the gardeners’ visits. A further foreseeable danger from them is social interaction. In other words, after they see your garden they expect you to come and see theirs. A visit like this may be pleasant and constructive, but there are also dangers inherent within it, because the gardener may well find himself endlessly hosting and being hosted, and after that there will be weddings and circumcisions, and finally the worst of all—a sing-along, in which special emphasis is given to well-known Israeli folk songs about cyclamens, irises, and anemones. Let me remind you that all this happens because once, in a moment of weakness, you asked for and received a buttercup bulb or some crocus seeds.

A further foreseeable danger is the gardener who disdains you, your ineptitude and your amateurishness—which is not difficult to notice—and appoints himself your personal instructor. At first he gives good advice. Afterward he takes on a tone of instruction. Finally, he considers whether or not you followed his instructions and reprimands you if you did not.

Sometimes the teacher gives his student a prize in the form of a much desired bulb—an especially dark cyclamen or large anemone—but he also indicates where to place it in the earth, standing over the student as he plants it, saying, “Weed a little around it” or “Don’t compress the soil further.” After that, he returns to examine how the tuber he awarded his protégé is progressing and to claim that it is too deep or too shallow, that the acidity of the soil is unsuitable, and to tell anyone who asks that he is the one who exposed you to this magical world—most people who mispronounce “iris” also say “magical” when talking about wildflowers.

Aside from these other gardeners, most of my grievances against them stem from the fact that, although they usually know more and understand more than I do, occasionally someone arrives who has absolutely no idea about gardening, nor any interest in it, particularly when it comes to wild gardens, but once they paid a visit to a garden like this during the flowering season and saw that it was good. They say “Wow!” and “Whoa!” and ask for seeds and bulbs and tubers. More than once I have given such people what they want, and the following year, when we happen to meet, I ask whether they were successful, and it turns out they neither planted nor sowed and have even forgotten where they put them—usually they leave them to boil to death in the trunk of the car—or they sow them and cover them up and a month later cement a path over them or lay a large stepping-stone on top of them. And right away I think of that bulb or that tuber, who were both so happy in my garden, and how I uprooted them and handed them over to that heartless son of a bitch who treated them the way he did, and my heart fills with anger and sorrow.

But none of that spoils the pleasure I derive from giving seeds and bulbs and tubers to those who really want them and who sow and plant them with care and consideration. At these times I offer advice and instruct where to plant. I stand over the person to ensure he is doing my bidding, I tell him the soil is too deep and not to compress it too much, and I come visit to see how germination is progressing, to remark remarks on the acidity of the soil, and to tell anyone who will listen that it was I who revealed to this same person the magical world of wildflowers.